


One Flew Over the Harpies' Nest

by esotericspell



Series: Inheritance, Season One [3]
Category: Charmed (TV 1998)
Genre: Charmed Next Generation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 37,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26522512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esotericspell/pseuds/esotericspell
Summary: Inheritance, Episode TwoThe Charmed Ones fought for and earned their happy ending. Unfortunately, their children must do the same.With a sudden lifestyle change, broken egos, and new responsibilities, the Halliwells are stuck between a fight they aren't ready for and a threat they can't ignore. As they scramble to navigate new waters, Wyatt and Pru earn more attention than they bargained for.
Series: Inheritance, Season One [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877485
Kudos: 7





	1. Wyatt I

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back! If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading the prologue and episode one first. As a reminder: this series isn't comics-compliant. The kids' names and powers are different and none of the stuff with Prue or Cole happened. Hopefully, episode one established the set up well enough, but I'd be happy to answer any questions!
> 
> Updates will be Thursdays and Sundays.

**Wyatt I**

They reminded him of ants, marching by in singles or pairs. From a distance, it was fascinating to watch the crowd take on a unified life of its own, despite the individuals that made it up having very different destinations. Students moved through the hallway in two different lines, navigating around classes waiting for their rooms to empty and friends chatting in the middle of the hall. The end of the line accommodated the obstructions ahead, moving to the side for a young man sitting on the ground that they couldn’t even see. Wyatt blended in with all the rest.

He was merely a single ant in a very busy, very colonised hive.

Wyatt tried hard to ignore the sense of déjà vu.

He hadn’t approached Leon in the week since their first disastrous meeting. This was, in part, because he and his family had been busy investigating the information Daria had unwittingly given them. It was also because Wyatt had no idea how approach the situation. He hadn’t given up—no way had he _given up_ —he was just giving his unwilling charge some space.

He had three different speeches and six strategies saved and was working on a seventh. The library in Magic School had plenty of tomes on Whitelighters: a dry summary of the establishment of the Whitelighters, a biographical reference on the more illustrious Whitelighters and their charges throughout history, a treatise on the impact Whitelighters have had on human mythologies, an analysis of the vast extent of a Whitelighter’s powers, and even a subversive text arguing that Whitelighters actually have a negative impact on a woman or man’s growth as a witch. There was not, however, a definitive volume on How to Be a Whitelighter.

The next logical step—or rather, his first step—was to ask his father and aunt for advice, and he had done so, but Paige had merely advocated for a stubborn refusal to take a no. His father had been a little better, probably because he’d had time to sit down for a proper conversation. But even Leo had to admit that his best strategies were worthless to Wyatt: Leon already knew about magic, so an alias was out, and his blatant refusal meant that Wyatt wasn’t likely to slowly gain his trust at a natural pace. No, something big was needed—something flashy. Hence, the plans.

Unfortunately, the week had given Wyatt plenty of time to think, even with a full-time job and a concentrated effort on behalf of the Halliwell family not to let the party ambush slide, and those thoughts hadn’t been reassuring.

It was hard to feel like a Whitelighter when he felt like he barely had his own life handled, which was slightly ridiculous, because at any other moment, Wyatt would actually say confidently that he was doing okay. He had a good job, a good apartment, good friends, and a great family. But those things meant nothing to a Whitelighter. In fact, it followed that they were detrimental to a Whitelighter. They were distractions and ties to a mortal life.

Guiding a witch seemed a much bigger, more important task this week than it had previously. Leon was nineteen— _nineteen_. He had his entire adult life ahead of him. With a good Whitelighter, Leon could live to a ripe old age, fulfilled, content and seasoned witch. With a bad Whitelighter, well, he’d either end up dead before his time or live his destined amount, but confused and empty.

It just seemed so intense all of the sudden. The life and welfare of a young man was in his hands. His not-so-old or wizened hands.

“What were the Elders thinking?” he wondered to himself, leaning back against the brick wall of the building.

“The same thing you were when you decided to wear that top.”

Wyatt glanced up sharply to see Astrid standing in front of him in a bright yellow, v-necked top and electric blue jeans. She shifted her purse more securely on her shoulder and smiled impishly at him with her head cocked to one side.

“What’s wrong with my shirt?” he asked, pulling the light grey top away from his chest to stare at it. It was an uncontroversial choice of attire, practically designed for office wear.

Astrid straightened her head and then shrugged. “It’s boring,” she explained.

“I think I can scrounge up some elbow pads to liven things up...” He trailed off, barely suppressing a chuckle.

She faked a gag. “You know what? Nevermind. Your shirt is just boring enough.”

After a moment of silence as the last dredges of Astrid’s class slumped out of the classroom, Astrid asked, “You’re here to buy me a coffee before my English class or…?”

“Or to pick up the athame you said you’d return three days ago.”

“It’s not like there isn’t a thousand other athames in the Attic. Stab someone with one of them.” She flashed a wicked smile at an eavesdropping classmate, who scampered away.

Wyatt gave her a thin smile. “But only this one has the brand of the Warlock coven that attacked us last week.”

“Fine,” she relented, sighing. “It’s back at my dorm. We could walk, or you could just orb it into your hand right now and save us some time.”

“Personal gain,” he chided. “And more than that, it’s teaching you personal responsibility.”

“Ugh.”

Wyatt indicated his cousin to lead the way with a slow wave of his hand in front of him, but their journey was halted mere steps later by the classroom door behind them coming to a jarring close. Out of reflex, he turned to look at the commotion and immediately caught the eye of the one person in the city he wasn’t quite prepared to deal with.

Irritation quickly clouded Leon’s face. “Seriously?” he asked, loudly. “Are you following me now?”

His eyes darted to the two of them. “Or are you harassing college students in general?”

Astrid stepped in front. “He’s my cousin and he has more important things to do in a day than follow you around. Ego much?”

“Astrid, be nice please,” he requested quickly before she could really get into stride. “And Leon, I’m not following you—though I can see how you might think that. I’m just here to pick up an athame from Astrid.”

“Right. And you couldn’t meet anywhere else but where I just happened to have class.”

“Well, ambushing Astrid is really the only way to get anything out of her.”

“I stuck up for you,” Astrid teasingly protested.

Leon looked ready to storm off, so Wyatt took two large steps forward. “Look, I realize you feel harassed, and I am sorry for that, but this is just an unfortunate coincidence. I do respect your right to boundaries.”

“But not my right to live my life the way I want,” Leon said bitterly.

Wyatt looked uselessly to Astrid for guidance, who shrugged.

“That’s not true,” he replied half-heartedly.

Leon wasn’t fooled. “Then verbally acknowledge, right here and right now, that I live my life as a mortal, and you wholly accept it, even if you don’t like it.”

Struggling for words, Wyatt took his next sentence one word at a time, resulting in a nearly incoherent conglomeration of sentence starters and fragments. “I acknowledge—magic isn’t like—my mom was reluctant too.”

Astrid hung her head and let her choppy hair hide her face.

Leon’s stare was starting to shift from an angry ‘leave-me-alone’ to ‘this-man-is-incompetent’, which, Wyatt gloomily realized was going to make his job even harder. Forget earning his trust, Wyatt’s first step was to finish a sentence.

A long, shuddering breath gave him enough time to, well, it gave him enough time that a trio of obviously lost freshmen approached Leon and asked for directions to Class 26 A 2, which gave Wyatt enough time to dig himself out of his tiny pity grave.

“My mom fought tooth and nail to keep her everyday life separate from her witch life, but she never abandoned magic completely. She couldn’t. It doesn’t work like that,” Wyatt said once the freshmen wandered out of earshot.

“The only problems I’ve had have come from people like you telling me that _it doesn’t work like that.”_ A glance at the clock on the wall caused a dark look to cross his face. “Well, and now the problem that you’re going to make me late for class.”

Leon shouldered his bag and hustled down the opposite hallway. Wyatt had the sinking feeling that Leon’s class wasn’t even on that side of the campus; he just wanted to avoid further association at all costs.

“I don’t know why I can’t do this,” he muttered when Astrid stepped to his side. “Yeah, I sometimes put my foot in my mouth, but not _this_ much.”

“That conversation?” Astrid glibbed. “Please, it doesn’t require much effort or talent to take a conversation that starts at zero down to train wreck. Now, you bring a convo from boiling to freezing in the span of a few sentences, then we’ll talk.”

“Thanks?”

“Any time. Now, how about we get that athame before you also make _me_ late for class.” 

Wyatt ignored the dull barb and followed her down the hallway.

“Hey, can I get your opinion on something?” she asked suddenly, slowing slightly to walk and look at him at the same time.

Grateful for the change in conversation, he eagerly nodded. “Absolutely.”

“I was thinking about getting a new tattoo,” she said, pointing to the underside of her left arm. “Yeah, right here: I acknowledge, magic isn’t like my mom was reluctant too.”

And then she skipped out of his reach and he was left with the distinct feeling that he should have just orbed the athame into his possession in the first place.


	2. Charmed Ones I

**Charmed Ones I**

_Three’s A Charm_ was in the middle of its dinner rush. It was not, perhaps, the best time for a serious conversation with her sisters, but running a successful restaurant left Piper with very little free time. The comparison with P3 brought a small smile to her lips, though at least then, her sisters had mostly been free to work around her schedule. Now, Phoebe was a local celebrity, with the occasional conference or talk show appearance, on top of her articles and a fourth manuscript, and Paige balanced two erratic careers, whose hours continually seeped out of the standard nine to five.

It had been easier, then, in their heyday as Charmed Ones, to connect. Gossip and updates could be traded as a potion brewed and advice was given during stakeouts. Not that Piper would trade her life now for her tenure as a more active witch. If the trade off for a peaceful, normal life meant time with her sisters had to be scheduled in advance, that was a sacrifice she was more than willing to make. Hence, the small table pulled into the corner nearest the kitchen with three glasses of iced water and three plates of _Three’s_ specialities.

Phoebe and Paige let Piper take the seat closest to the kitchen doors, no one complained if Phoebe glanced at her phone every now and then, and Paige was given freedom to zone out for a moment or two, should the Elders jingle or a charge call.

“I’ve completely lost all momentum on my book,” Phoebe admitted in frustration. “Chapter four is twelve words long, and my editor will probably reduce that to eight.”

“’Living with Love by Phoebe Halliwell’: Chapter 1: Do better. The end,” quipped Paige as she twirled a fork through her linguini.

“You laugh, but unless I can get through this, my book is going to be as long as ‘See Spot Run’.”

“But will there be pictures?”

Paige caught Phoebe’s affronted look and laughed.

“You’re a pro at this by now. You’ll work it out,” Paige reassured.

Not looking entirely convinced, Phoebe took a long drink, allowing Piper to join the conversation.

“I know what she means. _Three’s_ means the world to me, but it’s been very difficult to concentrate on produce shipments and linen cleaning when I know there’s about to be a new Source.”

Paige, who hadn’t distanced herself from magic as much as her sisters and thus kept in the groove since the final battle, couldn’t quite understand. She hummed.

“The Grimoire is still in the Andes, right?” Phoebe asked. “They can’t crown a new Source without it. I remember that much.”

Paige nodded. “I checked personally. Leo hid it very well.”

“Unless they just reconstitute the old Source like last time,” Piper rebutted with distaste.

“If they had done that, I think he would have attacked by now. He held a pretty big grudge against us.” Phoebe said with a shake of her head.

“We only vanquished him twice,” drawled Paige.

Phoebe set her glass down. “Well, we’ll double the protection on the Grimoire. No Grimoire means no Source.”

“Zankou didn’t need the powers of the Source to hurt us.” Paige said suddenly.

“Neither did Shax,” added Piper.

They sighed.

“I was trying to think positively,” protested Phoebe.

Piper took a long glace at her restaurant, full of smiling, ordinary people enjoying a good meal to end their ordinary day. Dejectedly, she muttered, “We shouldn’t be having this conversation. Not anymore.”

“You’re right. Our kids should be having it with us,” Paige piped up, earning alarmed looks from her sisters.

“It’s the _Source_ , Paige!”

“Of All Evil.”

Not deterred by the odds against her, Paige persevered. “They deserve to know, even if they won’t be fighting him.”

Piper’s retort was cut off by the sudden arrival of a blond-haired man, looking decidedly harried.

“Jay?” Piper questioned.

He glanced apologetically at her sisters. “Sorry, Piper, a woman is demanding to speak to you.”

Piper stood up, immediately, tossing her napkin down with a little too much force. “I’ll let you reason with her, Phoebe,” she said and set off to deal with the unruly customer.

In her tenure at Quake, Piper would have mollified an upset customer—perhaps too much. It hadn’t been until after she’d left the restaurant business before she’d grown a firmer spine. Now, Piper was firm in her stance—perhaps too much.

“Ma’am,” she said, not bothering to smother the slight tinge of irritation in her voice. “Fruity is not an allergy. Fruit, perhaps, but not fruity.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone,” the woman replied, arm crossed.

“And I don’t appreciate frivolous demands.”

“My allergy is not frivolous! I told the waiter this, and yet he couldn’t manage to bring me a proper salad.”

“You ordered _wine_.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Piper bull-dozed through the conversation, refusing to reprimand her staff for reasons beyond their control, even if it resulted in her having to harangue for payment. Jay thanked her profusely as the woman stormed out of the door.

Piper returned to the table, ready to talk some sense into her sister if Phoebe hadn’t managed to already. Instead, she was met with two stone-faced sisters, expressions identical in their solidarity.

“What?” she asked brusquely, hesitantly taking her seat.

“It’s about the attack on the party,” Paige supplied.

“Phoebe, you were on my side,” protested Piper instead.

“Well, Paige made some pretty good points.”

Piper brushed them off with a wave of her hand.

Phoebe took the lead, perhaps sensing that as the one in the middle, she offered the best chance for the oldest Charmed one to listen. “Piper, we have to talk about this.”

“What’s to talk about? Demons attacked. They lost. We won. The end.”

“Maybe the fact that the kids bombed?”

“Paige!”

Resolution settled on Paige’s face. She was undeterred. “What? I love ‘em to pieces, but our children were awful last week. They weren’t organized. They couldn’t fight as a team. Their powers were all over the place. If we hadn’t been there, the demons would have won.”

Phoebe nodded her agreement, albeit apologetically.

Piper took a moment to think. She suddenly felt like a fish out water, and a little defensive. This wasn’t something she’d expected to say. “So they were a little… slow on the uptake. We were rusty too. The world’s been safe for twenty years. They haven’t had to fight.”

If the conversation were a trap, Piper would have just marched herself in, though Paige wasn’t feeling particularly triumphant. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

Phoebe whipped around to stare at her. “Woah, now…”

“Excuse me?” Piper rebutted.

Paige sighed. The years of her feeling like she was a few grades below her sisters in the magic department where long gone. Against thirty years of experience, the three years Piper and Phoebe had on her were insignificant. She’d both taught at and ran Magic School. One of her first charges had a preteen now. She knew what she was talking about. “They’ve taken a few classes at Magic School, and maybe they’ve fought the odd low-level demon, but they are vastly unprepared for a Charmed life,” she explained. “There’s no other reason why nine witches should have had such difficulties taking on a few demons- especially when we know there are much stronger ones out there. Face it, Piper, our kids are way behind the curve.”

Piper wasn’t willing to hear it, however. “I will not apologize for raising my kids to be kids, not child soldiers in a war they in no way asked for.”

Their food long forgotten, Phoebe pushed her plate into the centre of the table with her sisters’. She idly wondered if any of the neighbouring tables were discussing something as important. “That’s just it,” she found herself saying, “They aren’t kids anymore. Chris is the same age you were when we received our powers.”

Piper shook her head.

Paige’s voice softened. “We all agreed to keep them out of the demon fighting business until they were old enough to drink in celebration after a vanquish. And I get that once Wyatt, then Chris, then Mel hit that point it was easier to push the date off in your head than face the fact that they’re about to enter a very dangerous world—I really do, I did the same thing with Junior—but we were wrong.”

Phoebe leaned forward to put herself better in Piper’s view. “I don’t want to think about Pru and Peyton fighting demons like we did, and three years doesn’t seem long enough before Portia will jump in, but I’d rather think about them learning the ropes than them having to go up against someone like the Source or Zankou when they’re not ready to take on an Imp.”

When Piper failed to respond, Phoebe repeated herself. “Isn’t that better?”

“Piper?

Her sisters staring at her intently, Piper suppressed the urge to fidget. Displeasure distorted her face, and her lips had drawn so thin, it almost appeared as though she didn’t have any at all.

“Piper…”

After a long moment where Phoebe and Paige half expected an outburst or an explosion, Piper surprised them. “No, you’re right,” she said with a contradictory shake of her head. “We need to do something. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even though her children are all in their twenties, I don't see Piper letting go easily. It will be a struggle for her, I think. Conversely, Paige has acknowledged this eventuality from the beginning. Especially considering her whitelighter duties. And Phoebe, well, I think Phoebe's opinion could go either way. 
> 
> Agree/Disagree ? Let me know!


	3. Pru I

**Pru I**

Pru shouldered her purse, gripped the cloth bag in her hand tightly, and with a deep breath, let herself into the apartment she shared with her cousins for one of the last times. A pair of dirty work boots on the mat told her that Henry was home. Fumbling from down the hall indicated he was in his room, but she knew him well enough to know that he’d follow the scent of food, so she turned left and breezed through the living room and into the kitchen.

She hefted the bag onto the table. It came to a rest with a loud clunk, and then a serious of clinks and the glasses inside jostled in their packaging. The container on top of the bottles didn’t make nearly as much noise, but it wasn’t noise she was counting on.

Pru set the lasagna on the side of the table closest to the rest of the house and opened the lid just enough for the aroma to escape while still keeping it reasonably warm. She had just enough time to retrieve plates from the cupboards overhead when the soft scuff of shoes on carpet alerted her to Henry’s approach.

He poked his head around the corner, shaggy brown hair dangling loose and a wide grin on his face. “Food?” he questioned, eagerly.

She laughed and pointed to the lasagna, and then handed him a plate. “Help yourself.”

Henry slipped past her quickly, reaching into their cutlery and utensil drawers. He had the lasagna sliced and was hefting a large piece onto his plate even before Pru could dump a prepackaged salad into a bowl. She set the bowl on the table and added the garlic toast he hadn’t spotted already.

Hand grasping for a slice of toast, Henry suddenly stilled. “This is Antonia’s,” he declared, pointing to the memorable red foil.

“Oh, is that what the sign said? I suddenly couldn’t read,” Pru responded with a slight, good natured roll of her eyes.

“This is the good lasagna,” he reiterated, pointing at his plate.

“Yes, it is,”

He stared at her for a moment, and then shrugged, as if suddenly realizing that good, expensive food, wasn’t worth an inquest.

She joined him across the table. They made idle chatter as they ate. If Henry noticed that Pru smiled more often, he didn’t call attention to it. Finally, Pru worked up the conviction to tell him her news.

She was moving out.

“Is Mel coming home soon? I have some news.”

Henry shook his head. “She has a date tonight, remember?”

Pru nodded slowly. “Right. The Fisherman. Well, you’ll just have to do.”

Henry set his fork down and waited for Pru’s announcement.

“Mike asked me to move in,” she admitted, cutting directly to the chase.

He flashed her a smile. “That’s great, Pru!” He paused. “Well, it is if you said yes.”

“I did,” confirmed Pru. “I imagine this will cause you and Mel some difficulties.”

He blinked at her.

“With rent,” she elaborated.

Embarrassment briefly flashed across his face. “Oh, _that._ Don’t worry about it Pru. Mel and I can handle it. I promise.”

“Are you sure? I know I make more than you two,” she said, bluntly. It wasn’t polite, perhaps, to push the subject, and she was sure Henry would rather drop it, but it was an important thing to discuss. All the pleasantries in the world wouldn’t help if her cousins simply couldn’t afford the monthly rent.

He waved her concerns off. “I’m sure. If we have to, we’ll get another roommate.”

Pru flashed him a smile. “I’m glad to hear it.” Thinking about it, she added impulsively, “You could ask Penny. She’s returning soon, isn’t she?”

Penny Locklen, Henry’s girlfriend of six months, was a flight attendant and spent a lot of her time away from the city.

“Tomorrow,” Henry answered, A red flush crawled up his neck. “I think it’s a little too early for that, though.”

In response, Pru merely grinned impishly at him.

“When are you moving out?” asked Henry, grateful to change the topic.

Her grin took on an apologetic look. “I was hoping to be all moved in by the end of the week.”

His eyes widened and he blanched. “That’s soon,” he said finally.

Eager to ease some of the concern she saw in his eyes, Pru quickly added, “I insist on paying my share of next month’s rent since I’m not giving you much of a heads up. And you can keep what I put into the damage deposit.”

Henry relaxed significantly. “Thanks.”

Pru nodded and grabbed his empty plate, putting it with hers, and walking them both to the sink to be washed later.

Curious, Henry pulled down the cloth bag still on the table to peer at its contents. Pru heard the soft shuffling of the fabric and said, “All yours.”

With one hand, Henry lifted out a six-pack, and stared at the label. “This is the good beer.” This time, his voice was slightly accusatory.

Pru waited for it.

“You’re bribing me!”

The exuberance in his voice brought a smile to her face. “Guilty. I know you have to work tomorrow, but I was hoping you’d help me move afterwards.”

Henry was already opening a bottle.

“There’s food and more beer in it for you, but if you have to pick up Penny, I’d understand.”

Hen considered for a moment, but a swig of his third-favourite brew softened any resistance he had. “Penny’s flight gets in at five-thirty, so I’ll have to leave for that.”

“Thank you.”

“Any time, Pru.”

She smiled as she breathed out, relishing in a combination of gratefulness, hope, and happiness. The previous week had been a mental and physical train wreck: three near death experiences at her work, an attack during her baby sister’s birthday party, during which she’d been hurt defending her, and then her other sister’s harrowing disappearance, all of which resulted in the revelation of a new Source of All Evil. This week, well, this week she and her family still had to deal with this new evil looming on the horizon, but she could recognize the good things: Portia was smiling again, Peyton seemed calmer, and she had Mike.

She heard a faint dinging, recognizable only as Henry’s ringtone.

“Your phone,” she pointed out quickly.

He hummed and paused, searching for the sound. She knew he recognized it when he suddenly lurched out of his chair and took long, hurried steps down the hall to his room, explaining “It’s mom,” as he did so.

Perhaps coincidentally, Pru’s phone, still in her purse, lit up and announced an incoming call. Phoebe’s face filled the screen.

“Hello, Mom.” Pru greeted.

Phoebe smiled in return. “Pru, you’re not busy?”

“Nope. Just finishing with dinner,”

Phoebe nodded, slightly distracted. Pru could see only darkness behind her, and heard a sudden whoosh.

“Same here, actually. I had dinner with your aunts and we want you to meet us at the manor in about ten minutes? We’re discussing… the Source actually, and we want to involve you, if that’s what you want as well.”

Pru frowned. “It’s not really about what I want, is it? It’s my duty.”

A slight hint of sadness filtered across Phoebe’s face.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m a witch, mom. It’s my job.”

“Pru…”

Pru cut her off. “Were you able to drop your magical responsibility when you were my age? Could you know that a demon was out there and still go about your life?”

Phoebe didn’t respond.

“I’m not mad, so don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll see you in ten minutes?”

“Alright. I’ll see you then,” Phoebe concluded and reluctantly dropped the call.

Henry emerged from his room moments later, an undeterminable expression on his face.

“You get recruited too?” he asked without preamble

Pru nodded.

“They’re serious then. About letting us fight,” Henry guessed, his voice trailing off as if he thought better of the rest of his thoughts.

“You sound surprised.”

“After how things went last week? Yeah, I’m surprised.”

The question came out of her mouth before she realized it. “Do you feel ready? To do this?” She swung her arms out, like avatars of their magical destiny surrounded them: a forlorn ancestor taking up the third seat at the table, a determined descendant perched on top the refrigerator, a harried relative at the sink, and someone, expression unreadable, leaning against the wall behind Pru. “To fight demons?”

Henry absentmindedly rubbed his chest. “I made it about a minute, and then I was taken out by an attack I didn’t even see. So that’s a no,” he admitted readily, flashing her an uneasy smile.

He gave her a moment to answer in turn. When Pru failed to do so, he smoothly continued, as if he guessed the similar thoughts streaming through her head. “I don’t think it’s something you ever can feel ready for.”

A beat passed. “And it probably doesn’t matter if we’re ready or not. Demons are going to attack, and we’re either going to offer them tea, or we’re going to fight.”

She laughed in spite of herself. Her eyes darted to the time displayed on her phone and then back to her cousin. Pru moved forward to grab his arm, saying as she did so, “Come on, we better get to the Manor.”

Henry darted out of her grasp and reached for the cupboard above the stove. He pulled out a half-empty box of mocha-flavoured biscotti and held it securely against his chest. “In case we decide on Plan Tea,” he said seriously, and then orbed them out of the apartment before Pru could call him a goofball.


	4. The Meeting

**The Meeting**

To no one’s surprise, Piper had cleaned the attic. Likely she had done so with no small measure of distaste—perhaps even to the point of irritation, but she had done it nevertheless.

She had also restocked the potions supplies and purchased a new cast iron pot, as the old one was looking worse for the wear. These were packed away, ready for use, but not necessary for this meeting.

Aunt Pearl’s abused couch had a new slip cover. The Charmed Ones sat at it, in front of a low wooden table. The Book of Shadows was on the table, open to a page chosen at random.

Wyatt, Melinda, and Leo tramped up the stairs and blindly stepped into the Attic. They carried two dining chairs each, which in addition to the stools and chairs recently rediscovered in the corners, hopefully provided a seat for everyone.

Wyatt’s clothes hardly differed from his casual wear, so it was Melinda that drew the attention. In a short and loose green dress paired with clean grey ankle boots and her dark brown hair piled atop her head in a loose bun, it was immediately obvious she had been pulled from something special—especially to those who knew her usual wardrobe.

“I had a date,” she explained before anyone could ask, placing the two chairs she held opposite the couch.

Phoebe hummed in sympathy. “You didn’t need to leave early.”

Melinda shrugged in response. Her disinterest said everything that needed to be said.

Paige snorted. “I don’t miss _that_.”

“It’ll get better. You’ll meet a great guy and all the bad dates will fade away into nothing,” advised Phoebe with a dreamy expression on her face.

Beside her, Leo and Piper shared a conspiratorial glance, missing their daughter’s blatant disinterest in the topic at hand. “After,” Leo mouthed to his wife.

Amidst several loud scuffing sounds, Wyatt emerged from the corner, holding a neon yellow plastic-bound easel with a large pad of paper resting on it. The first visible page showed a chaotic battle scene done with stick figures. He set the easel down so that is was visible from every seat in the circle and frowned slightly when he saw that it only reached mid-thigh. The problem was solved by placing the easel atop a nearby end table. The stick figure drawing was torn away, revealing a litany of blank pages.

“High tech,” Melinda commented sarcastically.

Wyatt ignored her.

A sudden flood of blue left Junior in the middle of the attic. A scant second later, Pru flashed in. Their eyes were drawn to Wyatt first.

“Super important Pictionary game? Cool,” Henry Junior intoned and flopped into the seat next to Melinda, and wordlessly offered her a biscotti from the box in his hand. She took one with a nod of thanks. Phoebe smiled, bemused.

Wyatt ignored that too.

“Who are we waiting for?” asked Leo with a cursory look around.

“Coop, Henry, and Chris, it looks like,” Piper supplied immediately.

A flood of lightly briefly flashed through the attic’s windows, signalling the arrival of a vehicle. “That’ll be Henry and Chris,” Paige guessed.

“Coop!” Phoebe called, summoning her husband.

The man in question beamed in just as Henry and Chris reached the final few stairs into the Attic.

They settled in and joined the rest in the circle of seats, with the exception of Wyatt, who kept vigil next to the easel with a large black marker in hand.

“Alright,” Piper said by way of greeting. “We have a new Source-In-Training, and we can’t afford to waste any time. He hasn’t been crowned—yet—but that doesn’t mean he is any less dangerous.”

Wyatt nodded and scrawled “What we know about the Source” across the top of the page and then looked expectantly at his family.

“His name is Malachy,” Paige began.

“And what is he?” Piper asked. “Warlock? Demon? Something else entirely?”

No one had an answer. The name alone had been hard enough to come by, and unless the Halliwells could stop it, eventually his name would be dropped for a title.

“Anything else?”

It was a short conference, lasting only a few minutes. Phoebe had learned that Malachy had recently returned to the Underworld—from where, the demon whose thoughts she’d overheard hadn’t known, and according to a trio of warlocks that had chased Junior through three vampire lairs, Malachy had the power to take out their leader. By the end, Wyatt had filled barely a third of the page. There wasn’t any mention of a Malachy in the Book of Shadows, nor in the few books Leo had perused from Magic School.

The problem was that the Underworld the Charmed Ones had known in their time was not the same Underworld of today. Any contacts or contacts of contacts they had knew next to nothing.

“That’s it?” Piper asked, perhaps more harshly than she intended. “We’re looking at a new Source of All Evil, and the best the magical community can muster is a name?”

She turned to Coop. “The Cupids haven’t learned _anything_?”

Coop shook his head apologetically, but when he spoke, his voice held no guilt. “Fighting evil has never been our priority.”

She gave a tentative glance to her son. “Chris, did Bianca say anything before you br—“

“No,” interrupted Chris, with a firmness that told them all it wasn’t an open discussion.

Piper let the subject drop. “And the Elders?” she asked instead.

“They’re aware…” drawled Paige.

“Typical,” Piper huffed. “Looks like it’s all on us. _Again_.”

Leo leaned over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We can handle this.”

“Well, _we’re_ going to have to,” she responded without missing a beat. “Apparently, no one else cares.”

Phoebe eyes shifted to the easel. “We need to know more.” With a smooth sweep of her hand, she pointed to it. “Let’s face it, that’s pathetic.”

Wyatt suddenly found the floor beneath his feet interesting and Pru grew quiet. Melinda stared angrily at the wall beyond the circle of chairs, Chris frowned, and Henry squirmed in his seat. Phoebe took one look at their dejected and frustrated faces and tried to offer them a kind smile.

“Well, if you wanted more on Malachy, maybe you shouldn’t have sent us after everything _but_ him,” muttered Melinda.

“We’re not blaming you— “

“It sounds like you’re blaming us,” shot back Chris.

“The low-level demons we were supposed to track were never going to know anything about a new Source,” added Melinda before anyone else could respond.

“I told you they were going to resent being sent after nobodies,” said Paige.

“They weren’t nobodies,” Piper clarified with a quick glare at her sister.

“You haven’t even asked us what we found out about them,” Junior pointed out.

The five younger witches watched their parents consider their next words carefully. Even Wyatt and Pru, who were far more level headed—and hadn’t complained about the easy nature of their assignments— made no effort to help the Charmed Ones back from the imminent clutch of the trap Junior had laid before them: ask for the information immediately, and it appears a placating gesture, and waiting too long simply validates the kids’ point.

Beside his wife, Henry Senior stifled a small smile, enjoying—for once—the spectacle from the outside and not from the side that felt useless and belittled. Only the fact that the disparaged side consisted of his son and his nieces and nephews, kept the slight twinge in his lips from spreading wide.

Still, Phoebe swatted him on the arm. “No pleasure from our misfortune for you,” her eyes warned.

“You’re not ready to face someone of the Source’s level, even if it’s only a fact-finding mission,” Paige said bluntly, after a moment.

“I hardly think that matters,” Pru said dryly. “He’s here.”

Besides a sympathetic glance from her mother, she was ignored.

“Low-level demons are all you can handle,” Piper began before an outburst erupted.

“I’m _26_!”

“Wyatt’s twice-blessed!”

“We have two healers.”

“I aced Advanced Combat at Magic School!”

Piper had to shout over them to be heard. “Yes, Chris, you are twenty-six, and Wyatt is twice blessed, and he and Junior can heal, and yes, Melinda, you were very good at Advanced Combat, and even with all that, low-level demons are all you can handle _right now_.”

She glared down any further argument so that Phoebe could speak.

“Right now,” Phoebe repeated. “But we want you to improve—all of you. So, starting tomorrow morning, we’ll be teaching you the things we should have years ago, a Charmed magic school inside Magic School, if you will.”

“Remedial Charmed School,” Paige joked, testing the waters. All she received in return was three scowls and two unamused stares.

“Fine,” Chris said gruffly, speaking for all of them. “I’m meeting Grady so I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” And with that, he stalked off.

Pru seized the opportunity as well, though she, at least, was nicer about it. “I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Phoebe smiled back. “Good luck, honey.”

Junior turned to Melinda. “You need a lift?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I drove here.”

Henry Junior nodded and orbed away. Melinda made for the door.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Piper said, and stood up as well.

“Me too,” added Leo, following.

Phoebe and Coop beamed out, hand in hand, while Paige accepted her husband’s offer of a very romantic not-so-late drive through the neighbourhood, leaving only Wyatt in the attic.

He couldn’t say how long he stared at the mostly-empty page on the easel. At least long enough to give him a troubled sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time I didn't forget to advertise that I am on tumblr (esotericspell) and while I'm not super active, I have posted character-type stuff on the next gen, if you're interested, including d&d and greek god/esses aesthetics.


	5. Remedial Charmed School

**Remedial Charmed School**

“I’ve never curled a tomato.”

A sudden snort wheezed out of Henry’s mouth like a torrent of rainfall down a spout. “Go back to sleep, Porsche,” he laughed.

Portia mumbled a response, though not a coherent one, and snuggled deeper into the side of the toppled training dummy as if it were her bed at home. Grace patted her on the head softly.

“Any one else feel humiliated?” asked Wyatt, twenty-eight and waiting for his mother to arrive to teach him the basics of being a witch.

He received a few verbal agreements and a couple nods of the head from those who were awake enough to understand the question, except for Chris, who raised a hand in assent, as his idea of ‘take a chair’ at six in the morning consisted of sitting on the floor and slumping face first over the seat.

Grace adjusted the laces on her shoes. “Antonio thinks it’s a great opportunity to be taught by the Charmed Ones and that we should take advantage of it, even if it is embarrassing.”

Melinda, nefariously moving a thermos of coffee in a pendulum motion just out of reach of a bleary Astrid, gave an exaggerated scowl. “He sounds like someone to meet the parents. Dump him.”

Henry laughed again. “Don’t mind her,” he explained to his surprised sister. “The subject of dating is a sore one right now.”

“They ambushed me!” Melinda protested, wafting coffee vapours into Astrid’s face.

“Well, I told Antonio if he felt that way, he should take my place. He said he’d rather sleep in,” Grace finished.

“He’s scared of your mom,” Peyton said suddenly without looking up from her phone.

“You think?”

“I know.”

“Great.”

Chris mumbled something into his chair. Grace politely asked him to repeat himself, but after three more iterations, it was no less unintelligible, so he was left alone until Pru beamed in with two trays of coffee held in her hand, which she passed out without fuss.

“You went to _Hava Java_?” Melinda asked, startled and staring at the logo on the cup in her hands.

Pru stared at her. Her brown eyes flicked to Henry briefly and then returned to Melinda. “Yes,” she said eventually. The two parsed a secret conversation through their eyes until Melinda relented, and hung her head.

A bright flash of light heralded their mothers’ arrival at the front of the borrowed classroom in Magic School. A large table, its surface crammed with dried herbs, soft powders, three cast-iron cauldron pots, a stack of notepads and an equal number of pens, as well as a bag of tennis balls, a jug of water, and something that looked somewhat like a large dreamcatcher made out of twigs, arrived first.

If the Charmed Ones felt any sort of disappointment at the sight of their children, staring at the table behind them like they couldn’t figure out how it got there, struggling to undo the simple twist lid on a thermos, and yawning widely in their pajamas, they did not let it show.

“Good morning!” Phoebe chirped. “Portia, honey, you’re going to have to get up now. And please pick up the dummy.”

Piper resorted to a shrill shout at her middle child, who sat up immediately, and even managed to stay upright.

“I know you weren’t expecting last week’s attack,” Paige began when she had everyone’s attention. “But that’s how most demonic attacks are. They’re sudden, and brutal, and you don’t always have time to prepare.”

“That’s why we need to make sure that you can handle yourselves, in case we can’t get to you immediately,” said Piper.

Portia shifted in her seat. “I don’t want to fight,” she admitted in a low voice.

Piper gave her a sympathetic smile. “Anyone who doesn’t want to fight demons doesn’t have to—to hell with what the Elders say,” she declared.

“But we do want to be sure you can protect yourselves if a demon attacks. That’s not something you can just decide isn’t going to happen,” Phoebe elaborated.

“Couldn’t we just orb or beam to Magic School?” Grace questioned logically. “And Mel has potions,” she added quickly.

To this, Phoebe gave a small smile. “You could,” she admitted, “But I didn’t see anyone do that at Portia’s party. I’m afraid the witchy instincts are a bit stronger than you expect.”

“And it may surprise you to hear it, but your moms are pretty damn good witches. We’re going to teach you everything we can, so that if you’re fighting demons or avoiding them, it’s _your_ choice, not theirs.”

The response wasn’t quite what they’d hoped: Portia, Grace, and Peyton apprehensive, Astrid, Chris, and Melinda faintly irritated, Pru impassive, and Wyatt and Henry slightly ashamed. But it was a better reception that the night previous so they plowed ahead.

“Okay,” said Phoebe with an energetic clap of her hands, “Portia, Junior, and Wyatt are with me. We’re working on your spell casting this morning. Grace, Astrid, and Chris are working on powers with Paige, and that leaves Pru, Peyton, and Melinda with Piper and potions.”

They split up obediently. Paige grabbed the tennis balls, water jug, and strange dreamcatcher-like contraption and claimed the empty back recesses of the room for her work with powers. Phoebe snatched the paper and pens and moved four chairs together towards the side of the room. Piper remained where she’d orbed in, hands on her hips.

“Potion work requires precision,” Piper began without preamble. “Too little burdock root in a protection potion and it doesn’t work—too much, and it will protect you from _everything_ , including the food that you eat. Wraith essence and black poppy are explosive together—any potion that requires the two will hurt you unless you know what you’re doing.”

“We’ve primarily used potions in vanquishes, but they’re often called for in spells, as well. Peyton, I believe you recently learned the consequences of not following herbal instructions.”

Peyton nodded mutely, and Piper let the admonishment pass without further comment.

“The first step is the ingredients. You need to know how to identify what you have in your hand, its magical properties, whether or not it will create a noxious gas if added to camphor oil, and so on.”

“I learned which herbs are which when I was still cooking cupcakes with a lightbulb,” Melinda declared.

Piper smiled. “I had to eat those cupcakes,” she teased. “And I seem to recall you not following the directions very well.” That earned a shrug.

Piper selected a herb from her pile and passed it to her daughter. “What is it?” she asked.

Melinda stared at the tiny spring in her hand. Half a handful of tiny white flowers grew out of a thin green stalk. She sniffed it experimentally and her nose wrinkled slightly.

“Valerian,” she answered eventually.

“Use?”

“Purifying.”

Piper gave a slight shake of her head. “Only when wrapped with strips of cedar bark.”

“Sleep,” Pru answered.

Now, Piper nodded. “I know you know the basics, and as much as I wish we had the time to make sure you _really_ know the basics, we don’t. On this table, you have everything you need to create a Blinding Potion, which would…”

“Stop a Warlock from blinking.”

“Correct, Pru. A very useful potion, so make one.”

Peyton’s potion produced such a brilliant flash of light that it caused one of the tennis balls in Chris’ care to fly out of his hands and bounce relentlessly off of the walls until Paige orbed it into her clutches. The four at the potion station blinked back the shadows and optical mirages in their eyes. Pru’s received compliments from Piper and Melinda’s was deemed adequate.

With a short glance to the watch on her wrist, Piper turned to her pupils. “Good work. Peyton, that was one of the best Blinding potions I have seen—better than any of your mother’s, and you can tell her I said that.”

Genuine pleasure lit up the young woman’s round face, causing Pru to smile as well.

“Way to go, Peyt,” congratulated Melinda.

Piper quickly cleared enough space for Peyton’s empty cauldron to move to the middle of the table. “We have enough time left that I can show you a simple vanquishing potion that can be made with herbs and ingredients any kitchen should have on hand.”

Her hands moved deftly through the motions as she demonstrated a potion she hoped—in vain, she recognized—they wouldn’t have to use.

Paige, meanwhile, stood in front of her daughters and nephew. “Your powers come from your emotions,” she explained. “When you are in a period of heightened emotion—stress, bliss, mostly stress—your powers are stronger, but harder to control. When you’re new to a power, it’s a smart move to recognize the trigger emotion, but you three have had your powers long enough that you should have some control over it.”

Chris’ face feigned shock, earning him a quick glare.

“Don’t look at me like that, mister,” admonished Paige. “I know you’ve had your powers since you were little, and I know you mastered it at an early age because I had to babysit you, you little terror, but even kids with full control over their abilities find that control in their later years is harder. Some of them even lose control. There’s a reason why your father hosts a weekly workshop here for adult witches.”

“I don’t have a problem with my power, Aunt Paige,” promised Chris. To prove his point, he swung his hand almost lazily, and the drawstring on Paige’s sweater twisted and writhed into a knot faintly reminiscent of a rat’s nest. He smirked.

With a cool glance towards the mess of her sweater, Paige cocked her head. “Tennis ball,” she called, but just as soon as it formed in her hand, it flew at Chris’ unsuspecting face. It struck his forehead with a distinct thump, and when it fell away, a red circle blossomed on his forehead.

Astrid and Grace smothered their laughter.

“Tennis ball,” Paige called again, and repeated her earlier motion. This time, Chris waved his hand and the ball reversed its arc. But Paige was quicker. She called one more time, the ball dissolved into blue and white orbs, and dropped on top of Chris’ head, bouncing once, then rolling away. Portia picked up the tennis ball at her feet, confusion colouring her face, and threw it back into her aunt Paige’s outstretched hand.

The twins cackled and Paige flashed a wide grin.

“The problem with telekinesis is that it’s fast,” she explained to her nephew, whose face was beginning to pout, though he would never admit it. “So, your reactions have to be even faster. In a duel between telekinetics, if it doesn’t come down to sheer strength, it’s going to be who is swifter. It’s not something you can learn, exactly, but you can practise.”

She tossed three tennis balls at him, slowly this time, so he could catch them in his hands.

“Juggle those,” she ordered. And just in case he proved to be a smart ass, she quickly clarified, “ _Without_ using your hands.”

Chris got the balls in the air easily enough, and began the initial stages of juggling, but at the introduction of the third ball, it bounced off the second and all three fell to the floor. He scowled.

“Practise,” Paige repeated.

She left Chris to work on his juggling and turned to her daughters. The amusement of their cousin’s antics faded away, leaving determination in Astrid’s eyes and hesitation in Grace’s.

“In my past life, I had control over the elements,” she revealed. “I was evil, incidentally, but that has nothing to do with this. I just want you to know that I know how hard it is to control fire and ice. Harder than telekinesis, even.”

“It’s not an issue of control, I don’t think,” confessed Astrid. “It’s just… the flame seems weak. It barely did anything to that demon we faced, and fire is supposed to be destructive.”

Paige remembered. “Well, many demons are supernaturally resistant to fire,” she proposed.

Astrid wasn’t soothed. “It was weak.”

With a nod, Paige grabbed the twig structure and passed it over. “I want you control your fire. Set only the branches tied with red ribbon aflame. Leave the rest untouched, if you can.”

When Astrid made to protest—that hadn’t she just mentioned that it was power she needed not control, probably—her mother cut her off. “Control it when it’s weak, and it will grow,” she promised. “Strength will come. But you’ll need to have a good handle on it first.”

Astrid set to her task, leaving Grace.

“I was even weaker than Astrid,” Grace confessed quietly.

They had spoken of the battle, and Paige knew how scared she’d been. “I think your fear was holding it back.”

Grace was silent for a moment. “That’s not something I can practise, is it?”

Paige shook her head. “No, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on you. I suspect if you get a firm enough grasp on your powers and you’re attacked again, reacting will come more naturally to you. We’ll take it out of your head and leave it to your instincts, okay?”

The older twin nodded twice and looked at the water jug, presuming correctly it was meant for her. “What am I supposed to do?”

Paige pressed the remaining tennis balls into her hands.

“Do you remember when we took that family trip to Alaska?” she asked, and Grace said that she did. “Your dad dragged us ice fishing and you kept freezing the hole behind him?”

“I didn’t want the fish to be hurt.”

Paige smiled. “You overestimate your father’s fishing skill. But I digress. Soak the tennis balls and throw them in the air. I want you to freeze the water droplets before they hit the ground.”

She gave a brief consideration to the rest of the room and twisted them both so that Grace was facing a corner all to herself. “Just in case you get carried away.”

As Grace dipped a tennis ball into the water and pulled up straight, Paige stepped back and tried to keep an eye on all three at once and reminded herself to be ready in case Astrid overdid herself. It was slightly ridiculous watching her daughters screw their faces into contortions and Chris struggle with keeping three tennis balls in the air, but Paige dared not laugh. She knew that if she did, then she’d lose them—Chris first, likely—and then they would _all_ be in trouble.

In contrast to the smoke and simmering of the potions table and what appeared to be Paige’s circus act behind, Phoebe’s workstation of four chairs and four pads of paper was uneventful.

“Potions are easy if you have the recipe,” she told her group. “As long as you follow it, they almost never explode in your face—unless, they’re supposed to or if it calls for pig’s feet. And once you’ve got a handle on your powers, you can be reasonably certain they won’t turn on you. But spells are different. Spells backfire all the time, in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine, and while sometimes the result is funny, afterwards, sometimes it’s deadly. For this reason, spellwork requires clarity. You need to mean every word in your spell and know what every word means.”

Phoebe thought for a moment. “And honestly,” she added. “Even then, it might go wrong. Spells rarely work the way you intend, and it’s just something you have to learn to work with.

“That’s reassuring,” Henry Junior wryly commented.

She shrugged. “It is what it is. Now, spells can do almost anything—maybe not by themselves and not unless you have enough power behind it, but there’s almost no problem a spell can’t solve. Or cause, as is more likely, so it’s not something to take lightly.”

She stared at Wyatt, Henry, and Portia’s bored faces and frowned. “I know we’re not causing explosions, but there’s no need to look like I just explained the difference between letter and legal paper.”

Wyatt blinked twice and only seemed to register she said anything at all two beats later. “Sorry, Aunt Phoebe,” he apologized.

“Come on, guys, spells are fun!”

They looked at each other.

“It’s not you, mom, or spells,” explained Portia. “It’s Professor Lyle.”

“Who?”

“He teaches spells here at magic school,” Henry added.

“And?”

“And the class sucks,” Portia finished succinctly. “He makes us analyze spells to enrich fertilizer and reveal the time of day. We have to go through them, word by word, explaining what the significance is of using ‘the’ instead of ‘a’, and write thesis on the efficiency of rhyming—did you know it dates to back before paper was common and spells were passed along by word of mouth, and rhyming helped witches remember? Possibly. Magical academia has differing opinions on the subject.” The last bit was laced heavily with sarcasm.

Phoebe shared their distaste. “Okay, that sounds awful,” she admitted.

Portia nodded. “So, I will smother myself with my own shoes if I have to listen to that lecture again.”

Phoebe knew, as a witch of thirty some years, that Professor Lyle’s teachings were very relevant and very important, but she also knew that if she had to listen to it, she probably would consider leaping out of a window first. “Then how about we skip the monologue and get right to it?”

Thinking quickly, she collected another chair and set it in between her and her three pupils.

“This is your demon,” she instructed, giving the chair a slight kick. “It can’t be vanquished, but it can be modified. Write a spell to change its colours.”

“How would that help?” asked Henry.

She squinted at him. “If he doesn’t look like all the other chair demons, they’ll bully him and eventually vanquish him for you,” Phoebe ad-libbed, slightly proud of herself.

Henry smiled but bent over his notepad anyway.

Phoebe gave them fifteen minutes. It was a simple enough spell, and if they only meant to make drab brown become red or green, then any accidental backfire should be minimal.

Portia volunteered to be first.

_“A lesson learned, a lesson done,_

_Let this chair be the hue of the sun.”_

At once, the chair flashed and was a bright yellow.

“Nicely done,” Phoebe complimented. “But maybe next time choose something less dangerous than a sun. If that had gone differently, we would all be char _r_ ed witches right now. Henry?”

He straightened his shoulders, cleared his throat, and spoke in a dramatic, booming voice.

_“’Tis the inside that matters, or so it is said,_

_Amongst its fellows, this seat feels no dread,_

_Yet at my command, the inside is red.”_

The yellow darkened and eventually took a rouge hue.

“Should I have specified? Said scarlet or tomato, perhaps? Of course, then it wouldn’t have rhymed” he asked, not serious and smiling.

“I don’t know how your mother deals with you,” she replied with equal consideration. “But you got the demon. Well done.”

She turned to Wyatt. He had several years on Henry and even more on Portia, and he had the added bonus of his myriad of powers. Such a trivial task shouldn’t be hard for him.

_“Save one, save all, from this wooden foe,_

_Break the bonds as they flow,_

_Bring brown to gold, then ash and dust,_

_So shall it be, in perpetual trust.”_

And they stared, astonished, as five skeletal, black fingers emerged out of the shadow below, and wrapped the chair in a gnarled grasp. The chair gave a hearty crunch under the weight of the shadow’s hand, and then, still brown, chair and hand sank beyond the cold, stone floor.

Phoebe patted her nephew on the shoulder absentmindedly, staring at the spot the chair used to be.

“Maybe you just stick to Book of Shadow spells. At least until…” She trailed off, unable to come up with a when. “Okay?”

Dumbfounded, Wyatt could only nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do feel bad for Wyatt, but he has more than enough power to make up for it.


	6. Wyatt II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wyatt's day isn't over.

**Wyatt II**

It took all of Wyatt’s willpower to focus on his job. His mind wanted to wander back to earlier that morning, watching the utter failure of his spell, and then wanted to connect that to his complete train wreck with Leon yesterday. And once it was done with those two subjects, it was more than happy to move off into future failures, mostly relating to Leon dying an early death and his complete and utter inability to create a spell at twenty-eight (twenty-eight!).

Next to that, the details of his client’s business accounts hardly compared.

‘ _It’s simple, Wyatt_ ,’ he told himself. ‘ _The computer will do most of the work for you. Just input the numbers into the column. No—not that one. Now you’ve messed it all up. Way to go, champ_.”

With a great sigh, he, once again, hit undo and wondered if he was going to get anything done today at all. It had been hard enough the past week, wondering if a demon was going to shimmer in. How would he protect his coworkers while keeping the family secret? What if he _couldn’t_ protect them? What if someone died? And he was left to explain to bereaved loved ones that Peter or Marcos or Ellen was dead because of him.

And there went his head again, off in the clouds, torturing himself with the possible events of the future.

‘ _Focus_.’

The numbers weren’t adding up. He stared at the account, flipping between the document from last year he hadn’t touched, and this years’, which he was currently compiling. It was a low interest account—there was no way the figures could have doubled in only a year. But as his eyes flicked over each number in rapid succession, he couldn’t spot the error.

“Miriam?” he called out to the woman with whom he shared this area of cubicles.

She leaned back in her chair immediately, but only turned to face him after typing an impressively large string of numbers. “Hm?”

“Something’s not right,” he explained. “Will you doublecheck my title threes?”

Her answer was the sudden scrawl of the wheels on her chair gliding over to his desk. He slid closer to the makeshift wall to give Miriam better access to his computer. Still, she had to lean close and while she ran over his numbers, he couldn’t help notice the grey tinge to once-black hair.

She had a family, he remembered. A thirteen-year-old son who had once shown up to beg for admission to the movies. He’d had a hard-enough time not handing the kid a twenty despite Miriam insisting that he was grounded for a reason. How could he—potentially—tell him that unspeakable evil had killed his mother?

_‘Enough. You’re just being ridiculous now._ ’

Miriam pointed to a spot in his document. “You just missed a line, that’s all.”

Heat flushed through his face—such a simple error—and tried to laugh it off. He failed.

She frowned at him. “Are you alright, Wyatt?”

He wasn’t, and he knew it, but it wasn’t something he could tell her, the family secret being what it was. “I just had a bad night,” he explained, trying not to lie too much. “I think I just need a good—

_“If you want to find the answers you seek, find us at the Bloody Peak.”_

“… Bloody Peak,” he said, which wasn’t at all what he’d intended to say.

Predictably, Miriam didn’t understand either. “What?”

He scrambled for words for a brief moment and shook his head vigorously. “Sleep. I need to sleep.”

She gave him a slight, bemused smile and took a quick glance at the clock. “I think you do,” Miriam agreed. “Just six hours to go.”

“Thanks. I’ll let you get back to work.”

She rolled away softly, leaving Wyatt to stare blankly at his computer.

_“If you want to find the answers you seek, find us at the Bloody Peak.”_

Wyatt looked up sharply, searching for the source of the voices. He hadn’t imagined it after all. Miriam was back at her desk, but she was focusing on her own report and clearly hadn’t said a thing. Peter and Marcos were arguing two rows down over the most tax-efficient way to classify their mutual client’s holdings. Ellen was busy on the phone, reassuring a nervous new client that a slight drop was expected, and the closest Madison had come to idle chatter since Wyatt had started this job was to ask him to pass the stapler once.

He checked his computer, in case the speakers were on. It was muted.

_“If you want to find the answers you seek, find us at the Bloody Peak.”_

This time, he’d had his eye on the room, and no one’s mouth made the right movements. The words seemed to echo in his head.

He dropped his head, pretending to be engrossed in his keyboard, but it wasn’t hard to hide in his cubicle. “Who are you?” he hissed softly.

_“If you want to find the answers you seek, find us at the Bloody Peak.”_

“Not until you tell me who you are.”

_“If you want to find the answers you seek, find us at the Bloody Peak.”_

Taking a deep breath, Wyatt rubbed his temples. The women, if their voices were any indication, were beginning to give him a headache. Each time they spoke, their words reverberated around his head like it was an empty cavern.

_“If you want to find the answers you seek—_

“Find you at the Bloody peak,” Wyatt finished, as loud as he dared. “I got it.”

He waited for the voices again, but mercifully, his head was blissfully silent. Even the echo had vanished.

“The Bloody Peak,” Wyatt mumbled to himself, committing the name to memory. His lunch break began in a little more than a half an hour. He could orb to the Manor and look at the Book. In the meantime, he had a report to make some sort of progress on.

Taking the sort of breath he’d learned in meditation class, Wyatt turned back to his computer. He added in the line he’d missed previously, checked that the numbers matched, and moved onto the next line.

_‘Bloody Peak? Was that in the Underworld, or a mountain somewhere in the world? Would the network monitors on his computer care if he developed a sudden and apparent interest in geography?_ ’

The deep sigh he let out was loud enough to draw Ellen’s gaze. She raised a blonde eyebrow at him, and he shrugged.

Wyatt stood and left the room. It didn’t take long to find a private room, though if anyone walked into the little-used storage closet, they’d probably wonder what he was doing.

His parents wouldn’t be any more able to help than he could do it himself. Magic School was still in session, and he knew his mother was at _Three’s_ —and probably would be until long after Wyatt himself finished.

Chris’ phone rang and rang and rang, which was typical. Somehow, the only time his brother actually managed to answer his phone was when he was on the train, or if it just happened to be in his hand, which it never was. No, more likely, he hadn’t even brought it with him, wherever he was, and Wyatt would get a message in a couple days: ‘You called?’.

The last option was his sister, who wasn’t working now, but who also lived on the other side of the city and may not even be in the city today if she’d gone rock climbing. But if it was a magical issue, he knew she probably wouldn’t complain about stopping in at the Manor.

She picked up on the third ring.

“Hey, Wy.”

He took a moment to figure out what he wanted to say.

“Hey, Mel, have you heard any… voices in your head today?”

He probably should have taken a longer moment.

“Besides the usual ones telling me to _burn them all_? Nope. Why?”

“I just—I need…” He sighed and started again. “Are you in the city?”

The noise on her end quieted down. “Yeah, I’m at home. I _could_ have gone hiking, but mom would have killed me. So now I’m doing laundry. Fun.”

Wyatt rubbed his forehead as he asked, “Will you look something up in the Book for me? The Bloody Peak. I’d guess that it’s in the Underworld, but I could be wrong.”

“The _Bloody Peak_?” Melinda repeated with a short laugh. “I was joking about the burn them all thing, you know that, right?”

“Look, I’ll orb to the Manor during my lunch break, but I’d appreciate if you checked the Book for me. I don’t know how much time I’ll have.”

He could almost see her shrug. “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

Wyatt let himself smile a little as he ended the call. He even managed to keep the small smile as he slid back into his seat and tried not to watch the clock tick by.


	7. Wyatt III

**Wyatt III**

“Find anything?” Wyatt asked as he reformed in the attic.

Melinda jerked from her recline on the couch but kept herself from crying out in shock. Her fingers, however, raised the book she had been reading into the air, and barely clung to the spine when she recognized who the intruder was. She set it down as he approached and shifted into a sitting position.

“For once, the Ancestors pulled through,” she glibbed, rose to her feet, and beckoned him to follow her to the Book of Shadows.

The Book was open to a page titled “Sisters of Themis”. Below the title was an ink drawing of three women with glowing eyes and curved rams’ horns. The text underneath was lengthy and his lunch break decidedly not so, so he looked to his sister for a paraphrase.

She obliged. “You were right, the Bloody Peak _is_ in the Underworld. Apparently, a sap seeps from the walls that is the same colour and consistency of blood, though the book makes sure to mention that _actual_ blood has been spilt too—a startling amount, actually.”

“And according to a book if anyone asks is still in Magic School’s Library where Professor Sinjin told me to leave it, it’s been a permanent fixture in the Underworld for at least three thousand years.”

“So, what is it?” he asked. “Is it guarding some evil entity or artifact?”

She drew his attention back to the Book of Shadows by planting her right forefinger just under the drawing of the women. “It houses the Sisters of Themis, ever since they were supplanted by the Oracle of Delphi and the original Greek Gods.”

Wyatt took a moment to process the information while his sister stared at him expectantly. “They telepathically spoke to me this morning while I was at work,” he explained. “’If you want to find the answers you seek, find us at the Bloody Peak.’”

“’Answers you seek?’” repeated Melinda. “Do you think they’re willing to tell us anything about this wannabe Source?”

Wyatt shrugged. “If they did, why tell me? Unless it’s a trap…”

“If Malachy wanted us, he wouldn’t need a trap,” argued Melinda. “We’ve been stumbling blindly all over the Underworld this past week practically begging for an ambush, and he’s already proven more than willing to come to us directly. Or rather, send one of his lackeys.”

“At a party, when our defenses were down, and there was barely any room to move. If he’s gotten this far in the Underworld this fast, he has to be smart. And if he’s smart, we have to be smarter. Right now, everyone from the Underworld is suspicious.”

“That Benzimar from the demonic bar Henry and I were at helped us.”

He suppressed a grimace. _That_ story had not been easy to hear.

“You got lucky that you just happened to be holding something he wanted, and I think we need to accept the likelihood that the thing most demons would want most now is our deaths, either for personal reasons or for the prestige and favour that would come with it.”

_‘So, you shouldn’t rush headlong into danger’_ , he wanted to add, but knew his sister well enough that chastisement was never effective. She’d continue on as she pleased until she learned for herself. He’d just need to make sure to be there until then, in case she needed help.

She must have caught the uncertainty in his face, because she pointed back to the Book. “The Sisters serve neither good nor evil, only those of prophecy,” she quoted, and then paused and looked to the side, as deep in thought. “Although it wouldn’t be the first time demons teamed up with a supposedly neutral party to kill us.”

“Don’t tell me the Toad Demon is back. I just got rid of the warts on my foot from last time,” Chris commented, sounding slightly harried as he entered the attic. His long arms struggled to hold aloft two large bags of herbs and magical supplies.

His siblings shared brief looks of disgust.

“That was months ago!”

Chris shrugged, dropping the bags at the herb cabinet with an audible sigh of relief.

“If it’s not the Toad, who’s trying to kill us this time?” asked Chris, carefully pouring mandrake root slivers into a large glass vial. He reapplied the heavy black cork and set the vial back in its rightful place in the cabinet. After a short moment of shuffling through the bags, he pulled out a bag of lavender flowers, and repeated the process.

“Still Malachy. Jury’s out on the Sisters of Themis,” replied Melinda immediately, and before her brother could ask further questions, she elaborated. “Three women who channel the three facets of premonitions. _Whatever_ that means.”

“Anyway, they want Wyatt. They probably heard about his raise at work last month and want to hit him up as a sponsor for new uniforms,” she finished dryly with a sardonic look at the Book, where the picture of the Sisters still lay open.

Chris largely ignored her, instead moving to the Book to read for himself. His eyes skimmed the page quickly, and then shot to Wyatt. “You’re going,” he said firmly.

Wyatt felt his eyebrows raise slightly, but that was the only indication of his shock.

From Wyatt’s left side, Melinda frowned. “What’s the point? We have two people who can see the future in the family already. I think we’re covered on the premonition front.”

He eyed his siblings, wondering if perhaps they’d switched bodies. Just last week, it had been Melinda blindly trekking through the Underworld, chasing nothing but a whim, ignoring Chris’ objections.

“No offense to Aunt Phoebe or Junior,” Chris said, with only the barest hint of sincerity, “but they haven’t been able to see anything. If these Sisters are willing to give up information, we’d be fools not to take advantage of it.”

Trying not to stare too hard, Wyatt turned to his brother. “And if it’s a trap?”

Chris looked up from the Book and smiled. “Then you’ll have me there to back you up.”

Funny, how, even when they agreed on something, Chris and Melinda still argued. To prove his rumination, Melinda scoffed. “You just want to go because they’re half-naked women.”

“You’re more than welcome to tag along too, _Melly_ ,” Chris snapped irritably. “Then you can lecture them about their clothing choices and not me.”

“Can’t. Got a date.”

“Oh? Before or after he gets out of prison?”

“Okay!” Wyatt said, louder than strictly necessary as he stepped between his younger siblings. He eyed the two of them, with their nearly identical scowls and symmetrical poses, and briefly considered which one to tackle first. As usual, it came down to ‘pacify them both in quick succession and hope for the best’.

“Chris, if we’re going to the Underworld, we better be prepared. Mel… have fun on your date.”

They gave each other one last mocking face before Chris turned on his heel. Wyatt waited for the tell tale thunk of the second-floor landing before turning back to his sister. “He’s not going to prison, is he?”

She rolled her eyes. “No.”

Conventional wisdom would dictate he let the conversation drop, but conventional wisdom didn’t know his sister. He squinted at her, suspicion clouding his blue eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

With an overly dramatic sigh, she flung her hands up. “All right, fine, so technically I didn’t pick this one out. You remember Ethan, right? He was one of mom’s servers—four years ago, I think-- and also dad’s friend’s future whitelighter charge?”

Wyatt did indeed remember. A good kid. Worked hard, often stayed late, was polite and patient with everyone, even ornery customers. He tried very, very hard not to look at his sister, lest she read his thoughts through his eyes.

Thankfully, her attention was on the distant thumping of Chris downstairs, and when it shifted back to him, it was clear she was preoccupied by a different thought.

“Craig was a good person. The system screwed him over; it’s not something that should be held against his character.”

“I remember, Mel.” And, admittedly, she was correct. Craig had been a good man as well, though missing Ethan’s distinct advantages in life, but more than one of her dates had _not_ been good. And if he approached every mention of her future dates with a slight apprehension that this man was one of _those_ , well, Wyatt thought he was entitled to a few protective impulses.

“So if you didn’t ask Ethan out, then why…?”

“Mom set it up, alright?” she responded, in a hurried and slightly higher-pitched voice. “Apparently, he’s been asking mom for my number and she went ahead and scheduled a date for me. And then, she and dad cornered me at the Manor last night—you know, when they told us we sucked—and did that parental guilt thing and now I have a date with _a future whitelighter_ that my _mom_ arranged.”

He couldn’t help it. Loud, raucous laughter erupted from his chest. At his first gasps for breath, Melinda began chuckling too. He looked at her and was laughing in earnest again. Smiling, she stretched one hand over to the couch and threw an –appropriately named—throw pillow at him.

Her grin took a long time to fade. “It’s just one date,” she said finally, resigned, and dipped down to grab the book she’d been reading when Wyatt arrived. He caught the title as she stuffed it into her purse, _Feeding the Fjord: Druidic Initiation Rituals_ , and decided he didn’t want to know. She swung her bag over her head so that the black strap crossed her chest diagonally and re-adjusted her jacket.

Before leaving, she pulled out a potion vial filled with a bright orange liquid from one of the purse’s front pockets and pressed it into his palm.

“Don’t die,” she teased. “Chris and I will need someone to referee our future verbal wresting matches and Pru always lets Chris win.”

Wyatt shook his head with a small smile. He waved his sister goodbye and let his attention and his feet wander back to the Book, where the Sisters of Themis stared back at him.

“If you want to find the answers you seek,” he mumbled to himself, “find us at the Bloody Peak.”


	8. Henry I

**Henry I**

When Henry, the monotonous drone of hammers clanging against nails still ringing in his head, stuffed his hand in the pocket of his long-since abandoned coat hanging off an unattended foundational pole, his phone beeped three times. Perhaps it had developed some sort of personality and resented the hours he abandoned it in the morning before lunch, or perhaps it was a momentary dead zone, but at the barest hint of his touch, his phone suddenly realized that it had three messages to display.

The first, he read with a slight, confused frown. Melinda offering to join him for lunch wasn’t unusual, but he knew her schedule well enough to know she was supposed to work today.

The second was much the same. Penny had sent, well, something that his phone couldn’t display, so he was left with the sad faced logo that, if one were to peruse a log of the conversations with his girlfriend, would feature quite prominently in her responses.

The third brought an amused grin to his face. Sent twenty-three minutes after her first, Penny had apparently remembered he hadn’t downloaded the same messaging add-ons she had and re-sent her original message: a wink composed of keyboard commands, such that even his phone could display it.

He fumbled for a response himself. Henry couldn’t quite bring himself to send a winky face in return, so as the rest of his crew lumbered past him, got into vehicles and drove away or opened coolers and began idle chatter, he felt increasingly a fool repeatedly typing the same four general words—and then deleting them— and eventually settled on an exclamation point. And as long as his Aunt Phoebe or his cupid uncle never, _ever_ read the conversation, an exclamation point was good enough.

A short glance to his coworkers still on site revealed that Melinda had arrived and had stopped to chat momentarily with Lucas and Ruth, which gave him enough time to find an abandoned water bottle sitting in the sun and rinse his sweaty hands and then rescue his cousin from his very chatty co-workers.

“Didn’t you bring enough to share?” Lucas drawled as Henry approached.

Melinda gave the forty-year-old man an exaggerated shrug. “I have enough for twelve pixies or two fully grown humans.”

“I’ll get working on some wings,” snorted Ruth.

At Henry’s approach, Melinda took two large, grateful steps towards him.

“Well, enjoy your pixie lunches,” she concluded and without waiting for a reply, set off in the opposite direction, leaving Henry to quickly catch up.

“You’re not working today?” he asked, pointing her to a makeshift bench next to his coat.

Instead of responding, she gave a great sigh. “National coffee holiday. No caffeine anywhere, didn’t you know?”

“That’s weak.”

“Yeah, but it’s better than the truth.”

“Which is?”

“I quit last week.”

Henry nearly stumbled. “Mel! Why didn’t you tell me? And _why_?”

She stopped walking and turned to him. “Some lady was yelling at me for something I couldn’t fix and once again, Eric took any side but the people who work him, and I couldn’t unfreeze the room and it was all stress.”

“What?”

Melinda took a moment and then talked him through it. At the panicked look that flashed across his face, she squirmed.

“I know it’s not great timing, because you didn’t get too many hours this month” she admitted, voice uncertain, “but Pru makes more than us anyway. If nothing else, we won’t get evicted.”

It was his turn to sigh. “Pru’s moving in with Mike this week.”

“What? Since when?”

“A couple days, I guess? I thought you knew. Her room is all packed up, and her espresso maker is gone.”

Green eyes wide, she paled, and mouthed a few words that weren’t actually all that uncommon at a construction site.

“I can handle rent for a month, maybe two, but that’s it,” he explained.

“I need to get another job,” she realized.

He nodded.

The panic slowly dissipated from her face, and then his.

“Okay,” she said finally, elongating the word slightly longer than necessary. “I admit that I have been a little negligent on the job search this week what with the demonic hunts and all, but starting this afternoon, I will go door to door through the entire city until I find someone who is hiring.”

“I’ll find _something_ ,” she promised. “And if I haven’t in a week, then I will beg Eric for my job back, and if that doesn’t work…” Her voice petered off and her forehead drew together in thought.

He waited for the rest of her sentence, one eyebrow piqued, idly wondering just what she could promise to soothe his worries.

“… I will see if mom needs any help at Three’s,” she finished quietly.

That’d do it, though.

“But,” she added suddenly, practically pointing one finger in his eye, “You should know that both astronaut and old timey town crier are higher on the prospective career list than Three’s.”

He laughed. “Your mom wasn’t bad to work for.”

“Mom was mom, but everyone else seemed to think it just _precious_ that little Melinda was following in Mommy’s footsteps even though the rest of you worked there too. There’s a reason why I left for Hava Java after only a year, and it wasn’t because I like smelling like coffee. But, because I love you and don’t want to see you homeless, I will debase myself once again—you know, if space doesn’t work out and presumably when they let me out of jail for screaming the contents of the newspaper from street corners.”

Again, he laughed. “Deal.”

That unpleasantness resolved, the pair set off again. “Being an adult sucks,” he commented placatingly as they neared a bench.

She nodded mutely, no doubt distracted by her afternoon plans, which left them walking in silence for a moment.

Henry spared a glance at his phone. Somehow, they’d eaten up most of his scheduled lunch break before they’d actually eaten anything.

Melinda flopped onto the bench next to him and brought her feet up to rest on the edge of a concrete slab.

“So, this vision of yours that you swore wasn’t a big deal even though it keeps you up at night,” she said suddenly, forgoing any small talk altogether.

Henry sighed, louder than necessary. “The vision I have repeated at length to every random passerby for the past three weeks. What about it?”

She fished out a brown paper bag from her purse and passed him a deli sandwich, and then added an apple and a bag of chips onto the pile in his hands. He frowned at the bag.

Melinda followed his gaze and snatched the bag back, replacing the salt and vinegar chips with barbeque.

“Wyatt said we were getting our asses kicked.”

Henry shrugged.

Not worried over his silence, Melinda continued, “That’s a little depressing, I have to admit. But it’s not really any different from any other vision.”

He hummed noncommittally.

“Chris is all in a tizzy, but it’s magic so of course Chris is concerned.”

She took a large bite out of her sandwich and struggled with the tomato for a moment. When her mouth was once again clear, she finished her thought.

“And, for some reason, mom is very concerned that I have an issue with Pru.”

Henry finally looked up.

“Probably because that’s what I saw,” he admitted. “Did she tell you?”

“No,” she responded. “Astrid did.”

“I focused on the wrong sister.”

Melinda smiled. “Well, to be fair, there was nothing you could have done to stop Astrid if she thought someone needed to hear anything.”

She waited a moment.

“So…”

He mimicked her. “So?”

“… was I winning?”

Henry snorted. He whipped his head around. “Mel!”

She shuffled her feet, lifting one foot and rotating the ankle, then repeating the process with the other leg. Then she bumped his shoulder with his and stole one of his chips. “Relax, I’m kidding. Mostly.”

Together, they stared down the block, past the houses and garages to the vast expanse of the city beyond.

“You think this is going to happen any time soon?” she asked.

He’d had more than enough time to think on the question. He answered honestly. “No.”

She took a deep breath. “Then we won’t worry about it now.”

Laughter forced itself out of his chest in three great heaves. “You know,” he laughed, offering his cousin the last chip, “that is just the kind of irresponsible thinking that makes you my best friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my outline, Henry's vision was just kind of... accepted following his initial convo with Grace, but that changed in the writing. Obviously the moms are going to get involved in the background. 
> 
> If you're interested, check out my tumblr (the name is the same). I'm semi-active and working on some more character edits.


	9. Wyatt IV

** Wyatt IV **

Chris met Wyatt outside of Wyatt’s apartment complex, and Wyatt had to surpass the immediate urge to ask the specter obviously impersonating his brother inane questions about their childhood just to confirm it couldn’t possibly be the real Christopher Perry Halliwell. Not only was Chris early, but by the look of the satchel over his shoulder, had actually _prepared_ for the excursion.

Chris grunted a greeting when Wyatt emerged from his car. Wyatt smirked.

“You’re not doing a very good job mimicking my brother,” Wyatt teased. “You’re at least an hour early and way overprepared. Don’t get me wrong, you’re an improvement, but your espionage skills could use a little work.”

Chris sent him a look that, in contradictory terms, was both lazy and affronted. “You ready to go?”

Wyatt held up his briefcase in response, and then jiggled it around in front of Chris’ face, just to watch him scowl a little. Then, with a nod, lead the way up two flights of stairs.

He liked his apartment, even if it was a little on the expensive side (but then again, as far as he was aware, every apartment was on the expensive side). It was well lit, with large, expansive windows, sleek paneled floors, and a curved balcony that made him feel a little bit like a king when he stepped onto it. It was, not however, the best place for Demon Fighting Headquarters, reason number one being his mortal roommate, and reason number two being his mortal roommate’s intricate wedding plans spread over nearly every flat surface.

“Birds of a feather,” Chris muttered as he followed Wyatt through the living room, staring at the charts and seating arrangements with a glazed expression. “Only you would find a roommate who makes six different seating charts,” he added, louder.

“There’s a Stark-Lannister dynamic between their families,” Wyatt explained. He didn’t go into further detail. It wasn’t Wyatt’s story to tell, and Chris probably didn’t care. “At this point, they’re just looking for as many buffer seats as possible. I almost want to offer to clone myself.”

“Personal gain,” chirped Chris, predictably.

Wyatt rolled his eyes as he opened the door to his room and neatly placed his briefcase at the end of his desk, hung his car keys on the hook beside the light switch, and changed out of his dress shoes. Then, he turned around. “Alright,” he said enthusiastically. “Let’s go.”

Chris didn’t move. “You’re wearing that to the Underworld?”

“Why do people keep saying that?” Wyatt shot back, thinking of Astrid yesterday.

“You’re dressed like an accountant.”

“I _am_ an accountant.”

“But you don’t have to look like one, especially in the _Underworld_.”

Wyatt feigned ignorance. “I don’t see the problem.”

“Are those _elbow pads_? Demons are going to die laughing at us.”

“Saves us the trouble of vanquishing them.”

Chris shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m related to you.”

“Well, you are,” Wyatt responded, placing a firm grip on his brother’s shoulder and orbing them out of the building before he could say anything further. Wyatt filled his thoughts with the Bloody Peak and trusted in his magic to guide them.

They reformed at the edge of a battlefield.

It was simultaneously ancient and active, with deep gouges carved into the ground, edges weathered over and crumbled, actual skeletal hands, rib bones, and skulls resting with clods of dirt, and fresh blood (red, black, and even some green). Indistinct figures clashed ahead of the brothers, using magic and melee indiscriminately. Someone was cut down and another vanished into a puff of smoke.

“The Book didn’t mention any of this,” commented Wyatt, feeling distinctively out of place.

Chris eyed the field warily. “Are we even in the right place?”

Wyatt nodded. He hadn’t felt any force mess with his orb trail, and beyond that, something in his subconscious was certain this was where he needed to be.

“Then where do we go next?”

Wyatt scanned the dim horizon, ignoring the demons and who knew what else battling in front of them. All edges of the battlefield blended into darkness, but on the opposite side, if he squinted, he thought he could make out two great stone pillars cutting through the haze of magic.

Chris acknowledged the point with a slight grimace at the horde between them and their destination. “That’s a lot of demons to fight.”

Not ‘too many’ to fight, Wyatt noted with brief roll of his eyes, but ‘a lot’. Wyatt could just see it now, he and Chris charging into the fray without consideration. Sure, they could probably vanquish a few demons, maybe even ‘a lot’, but in the middle of a fight it was easy to get turned around. Wyatt estimated they stood a ten percent chance of actually emerging from the battlefield unscathed. The other ninety percent indicated that, in all probability, they’d get lost after the third or fourth skirmish and end up fighting futile battles far from where they needed to be.

That would explain the state of the battlefield, constantly in the midst of war. Most demons, based on Wyatt’s experiences, would look no further than their next foe, believing that if he or she could just kill all of their opponents (and, somehow, most demons always believed they were the strongest), then the way forward would reveal itself. He wondered if this was the Base Camp of the Bloody Peak, only unlike mountain climbers making camps and trading supplies, demons lacked the capabilities for long-term (or even short-term) co-operation.

“No,” Wyatt decided, “We should try to skirt around the edge and avoid fighting as much as possible.”

He didn’t need Chris to verbally refuse to know that he didn’t see things the way Wyatt did. It was written all over Chris’ face. His eyes said “Let’s get rid of them once and for all”, while the slant to his mouth said “We’re strong enough to win.”

Wyatt shoved his brother ahead, a step or two away from the boundary, in case hands existed in the space where light failed to reach, which, if forced to explain, Wyatt would have to admit weren’t based on evidence at all, but rather a notion derived from one too many horror films. Still, judging by the barren outskirts, the combatants avoided the area for a reason. It could be because of Wyatt’s earlier supposition: that demons simply charged after the nearest opponent without any thought of subterfuge. Or—just as valid—it was the Underworld, after all—entities lived in the shadows.

Chris threw a look over his shoulder that was pure derision, and Wyatt realized he had been speaking aloud. 

“Can you definitively say there aren’t shadow people living in the crevices between the known and unknown?”

“There are so many ways I could take that…”

Wyatt suppressed a sigh. Of course, Chris would choose a joke over acknowledging the very legitimate theory that the two brothers had malevolent wraiths staring at them at this very moment. He edged a little further into the red-tinted light.

The brothers walked thirty paces before raspy growls heralded the approach of one of the combatants. Wyatt didn’t wait for permission, grasped his brother at the shoulders and forced him into the darkness. He kept one arm shepherding Chris behind and together they watched the demon approach. He had a half head of hair like a middle-aged father of three, but it was slicked back with blood and something a little more solid (and goopy) Wyatt didn’t want to identify. He also didn’t seem to mind that the lower third of his left arm was missing.

The demon sniffed, a little exaggerated Wyatt thought, and then revealed yellowed, sharpened teeth in the wicked grin of a predator. Beside him, Chris tenses, likely preparing himself for a fight. The demon stepped closer and looked in their direction.

‘Now’s about the time for the shadow people,’ Wyatt thought derisively. The next second later, he sombrely amended the equal potential that the shadow people fend of the demon or pile on to the brothers’ opponents.

He quickly mulled over the three strategies that came to mind: distract the demon, fight the demon, or hope something else popped up.

Number one would have to do, with a little help from number three.

The magic within him activated instantly. Chris evidently felt the power come to life, even though he wasn’t privy to the illusion, because he watched the demon intently. Wyatt projected the appearance of a second demon, based on the one who had thrown the energy spear at Junior during the party attack, with the shoulders of a weightlifter and the penetrating gaze of his mother.

The demon took the bait. He switched direction in an instant and hurled himself at Wyatt’s mirage. The brothers darted forward, Chris trailing behind with his heels dragging in the dry clay. They didn’t stop until Wyatt was sure they were far enough ahead of the demon’s perception. The mirage demon had disintegrated, or perhaps been overcome, because Wyatt felt the small blip in his magic, and he quickened their pace in response.

The stone archway loomed ahead. What had appeared to be pillars were Doric columns, with engravings of women and monsters trailing along the top. On the column itself, facing the battlefield, was the figure of a woman, with horns so large they dwarfed the woman’s body. Their eyes had no detailing, appearing blank and all-seeing at once.

With a glance to the other, Wyatt and Chris stepped forward, beneath the stone slabs that Wyatt pretended were only depictions of the past (and not the potential future), and felt the atmosphere change immediately, like the air itself was headier.

Chris snorted in disbelief, drawing Wyatt’s attention. Wyatt felt his jaw slacken.

“I guess we’re in the right place.”


	10. Pru II

** Pru II **

Henry was kind enough to haul the carload of boxes to the apartment before leaving. He did so, complaining about the sluggish pace of the elevator and the bland music it inflicted on its passengers (“I am affronted on all senses. All senses, Pru.”), the weight in his arms (“There’s no way a box of purses weighs this much, Pru, and what do you need a box of purses for anyway?”), the weight in _her_ arms (“Well, know you’re just showing off.”), and the traffic (“Oh, yeah, traffic was fine. Rush hour will be twice as fun the second time around.”) But he also helped her move the boxes of heavy kitchenware and books into their respective rooms before leaving, and offered to return later that evening if she required, so Pru didn’t give his apparent discomfort much thought after he stepped out the door.

The door shut with a soft click, and the unfamiliar air settled around her like a sweater. A week ago, the air hadn’t been unfamiliar. She had known Mike’s apartment almost as well as she had known her own; she found her way from the bedroom, to the kitchen, to the cupboard for a glass, and then to the fridge, successfully pressing the cold water button and correctly placing the glass underneath the nozzle, all under the best darkness the city could offer. But, this week, it was not _Mike’s_ apartment; It was _their_ apartment. Somehow, one, small pronoun was more than enough to siphon the feeling the home. It wasn’t a bad feeling that was left—just a different one. In time, _home_ would return.

Pru smiled as she took a deep breath and turned from the door. She spent the first few minutes in silence, refamiliarizing herself. The doorway opened to a small coatroom, where already her winter jackets hung on hangers and hooks. From there, stretched a large, open kitchen of sleek, clean, silver and black lines, and a grooved tile that warmed her toes in the morning, and cooled in the evening.

She frowned as her eyes glazed over the countertops. In a space that dwarfed it, between the spice rack-- swivelled so that all the bottles at the front were half full and at the back, barely opened—and the rice cooker Mike never used and never packed away, was a squat, two-tone coffee pot. And, stuck slightly off-kilter, to the water reservoir:

“Simple is better. Love (despite your terrible taste), Mike,” she read aloud from a bright yellow sticky note, and nodded twice. There was no reason to fake a frown, so a raw grin instead scrawled across her face.

‘Game on,’ she thought. The first step was to unplug the coffee machine and dump and wash the pot and filter. While those dried, she set off, opening cupboards in rapid succession. When they failed to reveal her beloved, _superior_ espresso machine, Pru moved to the window-lined living room: the cabinet, the ottoman cubby, and even the empty space behind the L-shaped couch where it rounded the corner. All empty.

The two closets that opened to the hallway didn’t have enough space with their regular contents to hold her espresso machine, but Pru checked anyway. Their office took longer to search: in and under the desks, the two filing cabinets, the Closet Where Mike Kept His Boxes, and back through her own boxes that she hadn’t unpacked yet.

“You think you’re good, Mike. But I’m better,” she said, pointlessly, as Mike certainly couldn’t hear her, but it emboldened her competitive spirit enough that she spent the next few minutes searching the spare bedroom, and didn’t feel much frustration when it, too, turned up empty.

Now, Pru smiled deviously. There was only one room left. She slipped into their bedroom and paused, as if she were playing hide and seek with her sisters and all she needed to do was listen for their muffled breath—or smothered giggles. The espresso machine certainly wasn’t going to laugh or pant, but it wasn’t the machine she needed to outwit—it was _Mike_ —and this room was the only one left.

She could practically smell the espresso already.

Mike, however, had nothing on her, and she found the machine within a minute, though considering it was sitting on the closet floor with a pair of her tall boots half-heartedly blocking it from sight, she doubted he tried very hard at all.

(Not that it diminished her victory, and if everything worked out, Mike would be receiving a smug photo of her sipping espresso in a half an hour.)

Pru scooped up the machine and made her way back to the kitchen. The soft pat of her shoes against the hard wood floor formed a steady beat for the simple (and admittedly, stupid) happiness that pulled her lips upwards and wrinkled her nose.

(It was only later that she realized she never even _thought_ to use her powers.)

Now all that was left was revenge.

Pru had her espresso maker plugged in and Mike’s coffee maker in her grasp when a cold shudder crawled up the back of her neck.

For a moment, there was no other sound, just a feeling similar to empty restaurant a week ago. She set the coffee maker down without making a sound and stepped backwards until she felt the unrelenting counter lip press against the small of her back. 

She didn’t have time to reach for a knife. A broad figure, swathed in a patchwork of different leathers and cloths, slammed against the bedroom door with enough force to dislodge Mike’s framed Undergraduate Certificate and crack the wooden walls where the handle met the wall.

He moved with speed of which Pru wasn’t prepared, with the intensity of a centuries-old grudge, and an anger Pru scarcely believed could be held in one being.

He held out one arm, palm upwards, as if he wanted her to take it. Pru would have backed up a step if there was anywhere to go. Instead, she found the knife block in the corner of her vision. It wobbled slightly.

The demon (confirmation pending) took a large step forward. The knife block wobbled further under the force of her telekinesis. The knives, specifically, stretched just out of her peripheral vision, but she didn’t dare let the demon out of her sight. Over the course of two, long seconds, the second largest knife rose high enough almost enough to clear the block.

The demon was not taken unawares. “No,” he said in a commanding tone, but the effect was ruined by his stuttering pace (even on such a small word as “no”) and the frustrated, confused grimace on his face.

Pru’s mental grip on the knife faltered and it toppled uselessly to the countertop. She squinted her eyes to try again.

“No,” the demon repeated, in the same manner.

The knife—and Pru—obeyed.

A low wheeze that Pru assumed was the closest a demon from the bowels of hell to come to chuckling sent Pru’s heart racing. She threw herself sideways, up and slightly over the counter to grab the knife herself. She meant to attack him, or beam away afterwards—she didn’t quite know—but the demon didn’t allow her to decide. He surged forward, into the kitchen while Pru cursed the slick counter surface that allowed the knife to twirl in place instead of slip into her hand.

Using the momentum he gained by running towards her instead of shimmering, the demon threw himself on top of Pru, and squeezed her wrist when she tried to stab him, until her fingers loosened their hold on her weapon.

Pru coughed, caught between the pressure of the counter and the force of his weight. Then, the demon yanked her up, took her by the throat, and slammed her against the wall.

Her attempt to beam away fizzled into nothingness when the demon gave a garbled: “Stay.”

“Take,” the demon growled next, stuffing an aged scrap of paper into her hands while Pru struggled for breath.

Her fingers curled on their own, grasping the paper and securing it in the confines of her pant pocket. The chill that slithered up her spine, at least, was by Pru’s own will.

She pushed against him, hitting whatever she could in feeble strikes. His grip on her throat prevented her from calling for help, but it wasn’t tight enough to keep her from breathing entirely. The edge of the counter bit into her hip, and her elbow throbbed. The close quarters marred what little air intake she managed with the rank assault of his breath and sent her brain into a primal state, desperate but unable to flee, but it did carry one, slight advantage.

Pru caught a fleeting sight of a corded necklace around the demon’s neck as they jostled around, and yanked on it with the full force of her telekinesis. His grip slackened immediately, and Pru took the opportunity to free herself. Then, while the demon pawed at his throat, she used her power again, against his entire body this time. He careened over the island counter, flipping slightly when his legs met the sides while his torso remained clear in the air, hit his head on the cupboard above, and came to rest after a short slide on the counter by crashing into the wall near the sink.

Pru tried—and failed—to beam away, and the knife block was now unreachable, so she ran instead for the office, where she had a few magical supplies still packed away.

She misjudged the angle in her haste, hit her already hurting hip against the door frame, and had to spare a precious half second finding her footing. Pru stumbled to her boxes, panting heavily now, and tossed the top boxes aside with no thought to the fragility of their contents. The box labelled “Files” joined them, as did “Replacement Cartridges and Business Cards. This Side Up”. “Stencils”, however, she clawed at, searching for a loose corner to peel the tape, then pushing aside the upper layer of letter stencils. Underneath was a plain, wooden chest.

Pru’s frantic mind calmed somewhat with an athame in her hand. She also pulled out a small vial of a cloudy, rust-coloured potion. Clamouring from the direction of the kitchen indicated that the demon had found his feet again. Silently, she found solace in the closet, suddenly grateful for the random assortment of boxes. Crouched down, she was sure she was hidden.

The demon took lumbering steps down the hallway, into the bedroom. He made no effort to mask his presence, if the loud crashing was any indication.

Pru’s phone chimed from her pocket. She swore and fished it out, hoping that the demon’s movements in the bedroom overshadowed her ringtone. Mike’s face filled the screen, and her fidgety fingers, in an effort to silence the noise as quickly as possible, answered the call before her brain had fully caught up.

“Found it yet?” he teased, with a smile.

Pru felt a grimace flash across her face and forced it into a polite smile, showing too many teeth.

“Mike, this isn’t—

The shriek of glass breaking interrupted her.

“What was that?” Mike asked, far too loudly.

The sudden stillness in the next room sent Pru crawling out of her hiding space. Clammy, she gripped her phone without consideration of Mike’s line of sight. She heard stomping and objects being kicked against the wall. Pru used her power again, shutting the door quickly, and creating a cushion of force to keep it closed.

“Was that a crash?”

The floor outside creaked.

“Are you okay?”

She squared her shoulders.

“Pru?”

His voice, practically shouting now, finally registered in her thoughts. She didn’t dare avert her eyes from the door, so Mike was going to have to settle for only her voice.

“I’m okay,” she lied, glad he couldn’t see her face, “Some boxes fell over, that’s all.”

She felt the demon push against the door, rippling against her magic, but Pru held steady. He shoved again, and a third time, with the force of a sledge hammer. Then, nothing.

“I gotta go, Mike,” she said hurriedly, and abruptly ended the call. Her hold on the door died when she moved her gaze to her phone to tap the right spot to hang up.

The demon didn’t come through, however. He shimmered behind her.

Pru guessed his intentions just as the air began to oscillate, twisted the handle with her power, and just barely cleared the door as she bolted past it. As she rounded the corner to the living room, she pulled herself to a sudden stop and waited. When the demon approached, Pru gave herself enough room, and threw the potion.

It exploded into a plume of smoke, but left the demon unharmed, so she sent the athame hurtling towards him instead. The demon raised his hand, just in time. The athame bit deeply into his outstretched hand; Pru could see the bloody tip of the athame emerge from the other side.

They both growled, he in pain and she in frustration. The demon stumbled forward, just close enough to swipe at her with his uninjured arm. The blow struck against her cheek, breaking the skin on her lip and pushing her body over the end table.

Pru hit the ground, right-elbow first. She cried out in pain, certain for a moment that something—either her arm or her ankle—was broken. On the other side of the armchair, the demon straightened. Pru forced the armchair backwards with her magic, knocking the demon to the ground. The chair dented the wall, leaving an unmissable crack in the paint, but it meant that the space between the two was empty.

Her eyes found the boxes of books. She managed to raise one in the air, and, just as the demon managed to untangle his arms from the broken pieces of armchair, brought the box hurtling straight down. It struck the demon in the head and he went limp.

Pru waited for the telltale flame of a vanquish and sobbed once when it didn’t appear. Her chest heaved and only one arm would support her, so she watched as the demon’s hands flexed, barely a twitch at first, and then a full clench of his fingers. He raised his head.

Their eyes met, inky black to warm brown. Pru grit her teeth, unwilling to appear helpless before him. She summoned the strength to lift the other box of books.

The demon shimmered away.

She waited a moment, in case it was a trick, and when he failed to reappear, collapsed.

Everything hurt, even the tips of her fingers. The last thing she wanted to do was move, but logic reigned, and she knew she needed to make sure nothing was broken—and that she wasn’t bleeding. With her one good arm, Pru pushed herself up in a great heave. Slowly, she rotated her injured arm at the shoulder. Her elbow throbbed, and the skin was pink, but a soft brush of her fingers indicated nothing was out of place.

A week ago, her first instinct had been to go to the hospital. It was an indication just how much her life had changed since then that now she thought only of her aunt and cousins. Of the three, Henry was more available, despite Pru’s guilt at interrupting his reunion with Penny. Plus, she wouldn’t have to face Mike’s worry when he met her at the hospital again.

Pru’s mind halted.

_Mike_.

Their apartment, now the after poster for a natural disaster, and a demon that knew where they slept.

She swore, inwardly and out loud. Mike’s firm was in the midst of trial preparation. He wouldn’t be home until 9 at minimum. Her brain did not want to comprehend the mess around her, and the impossibility of cleaning it all up properly, so she stared softly at the untarnished paint on the wall on her short walk to the kitchen. Four appliances flashed 5:58 at her (two less than an hour ago: her espresso machine was now in four pieces, the carafe of Mike’s coffee maker had smashed, and there was a deep crack down the middle of the rice cooker).

(‘What a waste,’ she thought, sardonically, of the past half hour.)

Step one was to vanquish the demon. Mike’s safety took higher priority than their gadgets. Then, as time permitted, she could clean (or disguise, if needed). An optimistic plan, certainly, and impossible by another’s standards. But not hers. She could manage it.


	11. Pru III

**Pru III**

The tail end of Pru’s beam bathed the barren room in a soft pink light. She caught a glimpse of it against the wall as the flash faded away. In the scant second it was visible, Pru thought her shadow looked tired.

Her old room was still empty—not that her cousins had any time to redecorate in her brief absence. All that remained was a discarded roll of clear tape, a thick, black marker, and three empty beer bottles on the window sill. All that was left of her old life was random detritus, and the current state of her new life was a pile of destruction. Pru resisted a sigh.

Instead, she twisted the door handle and opened the door as softly as possible. Illegible conversation filtered down the hallway, none of it recognizable so she guessed it was the television, but after a moment Pru’s ears picked up the higher octave of Penny’s laughter.

She suppressed a surge of frustration. Penny’s possible presence, after all, was why Pru has beamed into her old room. It wasn’t Penny’s fault that Pru was under sudden time constraints, and it wasn’t Penny’s fault that she didn’t know about magic.

Pru slipped down the hallway and into the entry way during a loud swell of music from whatever they were watching. As the sound faded, Pru opened the front door and shut it loud enough to explain her sudden appearance.

“It’s me,” she called out, before anyone could investigate. There was a small, circular mirror on the wall adjacent to the door—placed there initially out of a late night (and slightly drunken) challenge to see the entry way from the living room, and kept in place as a last-minute check before she or her cousins left for the day. It was her first, proper reflection, and she was glad she’d taken the cautious route into the apartment. Clumps of her hair had fallen out of the clip at the nape of her neck, a small cut on her lip spread blood on the light skin beneath her lips, and the demon’s choke hold had reddened the skin of her throat. “Henry, I could use your height,” she said in what she hoped was a conversational tone. “Please.”

Pru heard the soft creak of couch springs and then the heavy gate of her cousin. She kept herself out of sight until he rounded the corner proper. Then, she stepped into view.

Henry’s eyes widened and he inhaled sharply, but thankfully, kept the noise of shock to a minimum. Wordlessly, a golden light enveloped his right hand, and he hovered his palm over her jaw. An ache in her throat she hadn’t even felt until it was gone disappeared and the taste of iron vanished. Pru held out her elbow and almost groaned when she realized the disheveled state of her attire. While Henry healed her elbow and ankle at her prompting, Pru smoothed at her blouse like that would fix the tear in the shoulder and hem. Henry must have noticed her ministrations, because when he finished with her ankle, he pulled a navy blue peacoat of Melinda’s off its hanger and pressed it into her hands.

Pru pulled the coat on, feeling only relief when her elbow moved without protest. Then, she released the clasp holding only half her hair in place, ran her fingers through the tangles, and wound it back up.

Henry nodded once and shuffled back into the living room. Pru followed. Whereas Henry resumed his place at the end of the couch, Pru stopped short. Melinda was in the worn armchair, one leg under the other, and arms crossed close to her chest. On the couch, seated closer to the edge of the cushions in a position that belied tension instead of ease, and with a chasm of empty space between them and Mel, were Penny and Henry. No one spoke.

There was a faint hint of sweet coconut in the air. Penny’s hair was wet and the slight frizz on Henry’s indicated it had only recently dried.

“What happened?” Pru asked cautiously, eyeing her cousins.

Melinda and Henry looked at each other immediately, and then just as quickly, directed their attention to opposite walls. Something of a blush crept up Henry’s neck, and Melinda’s cheeks sucked inwards.

Finally, Mel spoke up. “I came home to work on my resume,” she said, in something of a clipped voice. “I heard a crash from the shower and thought Henry might have been attacked, so I investigated.”

She waited a moment. “It wasn’t an attack.”

Henry’s blush deepened, and the pieces clicked together in Pru’s mind. She laughed. “Saw something you never wanted to?” she asked Melinda.

Melinda brought her hand to her eyes and her lips ticked upwards in a sardonic smile. “The only reason I haven’t carved out my eyeballs is because I don’t want that to be the last thing I see.”

Pru snorted, but the amusement evidently wasn’t shared by Penny, who scowled.

“I don’t understand why in the _world_ you would assume we were under attack in the first place,” Penny stated slowly, her words drawn out like there was more she wanted to say, but suppressed it at last minute. “What? Did a thief bypass the locked door and _magically_ appear in the bathroom? Honestly.”

From her angle, Penny couldn’t see the scathing look Melinda sent her. Henry, however, did and sent her a warning look.

Through gritted teeth, Melinda hissed, “I was concerned about my cousin’s safety.”

“He was in the _bathroom_.”

Henry groaned and seemed to sink into the couch. “Can we just stop talking about this?”

As she took in each of their gazes over the course of the next few seconds, Pru tried to lend them all some sympathy. Penny, especially, could have benefitted from it. There was an entire layer of the conversation she wasn’t privy to, and had to know that, on top of a heap of mortification.

And Pru was about to make the problem worse.

“My day hasn’t been great either,” Pru explained slowly, having finally come up with a thin veil to mask her true intent from Penny. “I stepped into a tack. A tack.”

She received two blank looks, and even Henry looked at her in slight confusion. Pru closed her eyes and sighed.

When she opened them again, Penny had turned to Henry. “Honestly, Henry,” she said, bluntly, “your family is so _weird_.”

Some of the sympathy for Penny slipped away and Pru had to keep her face in an easy smile. Melinda, meanwhile, took a deep breath and her throat rumbled from the force of a supressed growl. She turned to Pru in a sudden jerk, seemingly happy to leap on a change of topic.

“That sucks?” she replied, unsure.

Pru found her eyes. “Yes,” she said firmly. “Me, a tack, just now.”

Henry hummed.

With her attention half on the television, Melinda didn’t fully grasp Pru’s point. “Is your tetanus shot up to date?” she asked, clearly at a loss how to contribute to the conversation. Then, after staring at Pru for a moment, Melinda frowned. “Why are you wearing my coat?”

Pru looked to Henry instead, who twisted to face his girlfriend.

“Why don’t we spend the night at your place?” he suggested with faked enthusiasm, cupping her shoulders in his hands.

Penny stared up at him. Henry laughed. “Yeah. You told me so. I just need to check with Pru about something. I’ll met you at the car. We’ll pick up food on our way.”

“Wine too.”

He kissed the top of her head, and Penny offered a sincere, albeit awkward farewell.

The moment the door clicked behind her, Henry turned to Pru.

“ _Attack_!” Melinda said suddenly, with a grimace, falling just short of hitting herself in the head. She stood up.

“What happened?” questioned Henry.

Pru summarized the attack quickly. “He showed up not long after you left. Brown hair, wild eyes, and very strong. I dropped a box of books on him and he got up like it was nothing.”

“We don’t see many demons with broken bones,” commented Melinda. “They must drink a lot of milk.”

Pru and Henry ignored her.

“How do you want to deal with this?” he asked. “Do we need the Charmed Ones?”

She thought it over: either travel to three places, explaining each time and collecting Charmed Ones like Easter Eggs, or send out a general message, wait at the manor, retell her story three times—possibly five if Uncle Leo and Chris got involved. They’d be lucky to get started before midnight.

Some of the distaste must have shown on her face, because Henry looked at her curiously.

“Mike isn’t safe while this demon knows where we live. We need to vanquish him, and I think we need to do this ourselves. We can always call for help.”

Melinda smiled at her. “Hell yeah,” she enthused. “Wyatt and Chris wouldn’t be able to help, though. They’re wandering through Underworld. I’ll explain later,” she added, waving off their questions.

Pru was undeterred. “Aunt Paige, then. But we need to get moving. Mike will be home by nine thirty, and I have to clean the apartment.”

Henry nodded once. “I’ll take Penny home and meet you at the Manor.”

She tried and failed to not let her frustration show.

“I’ll drive fast,” he promised.

She shot him a glare.

“As legally permitted,” amended Henry, and left the room before Pru could admonish him further.

Melinda shifted her stance onto her right leg, letting the tip of left boot scuff against the floor, and crossed her arms. “Why the rush?”

Balefully, Pru replied immediately. “The apartment is a mess. I don’t even want to think about how many things need to be replaced.”

Instead of backing off, Melinda tensed like a predator in for a kill. “I don’t doubt it,” she said smoothly, “but _why the rush_?”

Pru felt herself fidgeting. “I don’t want Mike to come home and find the kitchen turned upside down.”

And the living room, office, and bedroom.

“He’s living with a witch. He’s going to have to get used to it.”

In response, Pru said the first excuse she could come up with. “He sometimes brings colleagues home.”

The room seemed to shrink around them. Melinda stared at her for a long moment, penetrating the flimsy aura of peace Pru has built up since the attack. “You’re lying to me.”

The only response Pru could muster was a huff of indignation.

Melinda laughed without humour. “Come on, Pru. I dealt with lying customers for years. I may not be able to talk old ladies into buying houses with Olympic-sized swimming pools and basketball courts—or whatever it is you do—but I certainly know a blatant lie when I hear one.”

“I’m a salesperson, and my _manager_ found a home with a tennis court on behalf of Mrs. Shen, who bought the house for her nephew. Don’t make me out to be some snake oil salesman.”

A deflection, she knew it, and one that dug her an even deeper hole.

“What are hiding?” Melinda was not going to let this go.

The events of the evening had wrecked havoc on her body and spirit. Pru felt herself shudder slightly. “Mike doesn’t know I’m a witch,” she admitted weakly.

_“What?”_

“I don’t owe you an explanation, Melinda.”

“You’re right,” she laughed, once again without humour, “you owe Mike one. You moved in with him and he doesn’t know you’re a witch? I may not be half cupid, but that doesn’t sound very _committed_ to me.”

Anger and irritation swirled in a vortex in Pru’s heart, at her cousin, at the demon, at herself, and even a little at Mike. Words didn’t seem adequate anymore. Pru’s shoulders drew back, her jaw receded, and she took a deep breath. It probably looked to Melinda like Pru would explain herself.

Instead, Pru simply beamed away.


	12. Pru IV

Pru didn’t bother to look up from her search when Melinda popped into the attic. She knew how her cousin would appear: arms crossed, weight on her right leg, and head slightly tilted.

“If you wanted this dealt with as soon as possible, maybe leaving me stranded across the city wasn’t the greatest decision,” criticized Melinda. “You’re lucky I had a potion left.”

Pru’s mind instantly conjured a catalogue of responses, flitting from the logical “you weren’t actually stranded”, to the petty “maybe I left you behind for a reason”, but every possible retort felt inadequate.

“It’s not an easy thing to share,” she said somehow instead of suggesting they just get to work. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Pass the sugar. By the way, I’m a witch?’”

She really shouldn’t have been surprised by Melinda’s reply: “If that’s what works.”

Pru flipped the pages of the Book of Shadows faster.

“I can’t believe, you, Prudence Laura Halliwell, _widely hailed_ as one of the most responsible women on the planet, Miss Dedicated herself, haven’t told your long-term boyfriend that you fly around on a broomstick, scaring children with your hook nose.”

Biting off a growl of frustration, Pru stepped away from the podium and finally looked up. Melinda’s position was exactly as Pru had predicted: stubborn and ready for a fight.

“Why are you hounding me about this?” Pru snapped. “It doesn’t involve you.”

“After all the crap I took for not telling Henry I quit my job? Hell yeah, I’m going to bite when your hypocrisy rears its ugly head.”

Pru scoffed. “What crap? I gave you _one_ look.”

Melinda’s eyebrow rose in a challenge. She pulled out her phone from her back pocket and suddenly Pru remembered. The message.

“’It may not be my place to tell Henry directly, but I cannot abide your deceit,’” quoted Melinda scathingly, as she read from the screen. “’Your decision to quit is your own, but the consequences are shared. Henry has a right to know he now shoulders the financial state of the apartment alone until you find employment, and failing to acknowledge thus is irresponsible, immature, and a grave insult to the friendship between you. You are twenty-three, Melinda, and it is time to act as an adult.’ Sent today at 1:42pm.”

The afternoon felt like days ago, but Pru couldn’t deny that those were her words. There had been a conversation leading up to that message that she felt lessened the sting of what she said, or at least explained the harshness, but she knew it didn’t matter. Unable to meet Melinda’s accusing gaze, Pru shifted her sight back to the Book at her right side.

“The situations are different,” she rebutted weakly.

“You also didn’t tell me that you were moving out. I had to hear it from Henry, today.”

“I wanted to tell you in person! Between the move, work, and the demon hunt I just haven’t had the time.”

“I know,” Melinda agreed. Surprised, Pru shot her head up. “That’s why I’m not mad about it.” Pru made to disagree, and Melinda hastily added, “Much.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then, Melinda sighed. “I’m not fighting you on this just to be an asshole,” she said. Pru believed her. “I like Mike. He makes great waffles. And all that mushy stuff about love, too, I guess. He deserves to know who he’s moving in with.”

Pru stayed silent for a minute longer, lost in a memory. “I told him once,” she remembered, quietly, but in the empty house, Pru knew Melinda heard perfectly well. “A year ago. I don’t even remember how it came up. I said I believed in ghosts and he said ‘I guess everybody is a little irrational.’”

A sympathetic wince flashed across Melinda’s face. “That’s… not encouraging.”

“I’m just trying to find the right words, so he’ll understand.”

“There’s only so much preparation you can do. At some point, you just have to leap and figure out how to fly on the way down.”

If Melinda had left it there, Pru might have considered the conversation worth it. But, in typical Melinda fashion, she added, “Personally, that point would have been a year ago.”

Pru swallowed the response that immediately came to mind, namely the utter train wreck of Melinda’s last, serious relationship. Two words, Jeffery Larson, and Melinda would surely have to walk back her claim. Casting and recasting the Truth Spell three times until she finally understood that her boyfriend just wasn’t going to come around certainly wasn’t a leap. It was a hesitant scramble over a cliffside, clinging to any crevice available before accepting the inevitable plummet.

But that would resume the fight and they’d already wasted too much time.

“Let’s just find this demon,” Pru said, resigned and tired.

Nine minutes later, lights flashed across the opposite window in the Attic, either heralding Piper or Henry’s arrival. Neither Pru nor Melinda bothered trying to answer the question themselves, not when the answer would be clear in a moment.

“Is this him?” Melinda asked, bored and slightly despondent, pointing to an ink drawing of a demon with six arms.

“No,” Pru affirmed after a brief look at the page. She resumed her own perusal.

Mechanically, Melinda brought the next page to sight. “What about him?”

“No.”

Flip.

“Him?”

“No.”

Flip.

“Him?”

“That’s a her.”

“Oh.”

Flip.

This time, Melinda at least glanced at the page. “Did the Muses attack you?” she asked, too frustrated even to lace her words with sarcasm. Pru didn’t bother to respond.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Melinda complained with a hefty sigh. “Brown hair, wild eyes, lots of scars could be any number of demons. He might not even be in the Book.”

“Which might explain why when _I_ looked through the Book five minutes ago and found nothing I started looking through a _different_ book.” Pru’s words were as dry as the tome in her hand, cracked at the edges and worn at the spine.

Clunks from the directions of the stairwell drew their attention, not to the door, but to each other. They stared at one another, unyielding. Henry pushed through the door with an apple in one hand and a bundle of herbs in the other.

“Find anything?” he asked, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the air.

“Nothing,” Pru and Melinda said in unison, in identical tones.

Henry held up his hands, still grasping his collection of produce. A sprig of thyme fell to the floor. “Just asking,” he laughed. He dropped the herbs next to the empty brewing table and returned for the thyme.

“We’re just going to have to wing it,” Pru decided firmly, shutting the book in her hands with a sharp clap.

Henry’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. Melinda squinted her eyes, like she suddenly wasn’t sure she could trust her senses anymore.

“ _Really_?” pressed Henry. When Pru sent him a withering look, more annoyed with the continuous questioning of her actions than him specifically, he offered a sheepish, placating smile in return. “It’s just, uh, rushing headlong into trouble is more of our thing.” His finger moved between himself and Melinda several times. “This demon really got to you, huh?”

She forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. “Yes,” she acknowledged, stiffly. “So, how do we find him?”

Henry turned to his other cousin. “What about your Pointer Spell?”

“It needs something that comes from the target to work.”

Pru set the book down. “He broke enough furniture in my apartment. I’m sure he left something behind. You two brew the strongest generic potion you can find—I think there’s one after the Time Travel Spell. I’ll be back.”

She left them no time to argue and beamed herself back to her apartment.

Trying not to count how many items needed to be swept, repaired, or thrown away in a rapidly dwindling amount of time, Pru began her search. The box of books was dented at the bottom, where the demon’s head had met the cardboard, and folded at the top, where the books, met with the unrelenting force of a forehead, had nowhere else to go but up through the lid, but otherwise unchanged. The carnage in the kitchen however, yielded a tiny scrap of leather caught around the knob of a drawer. She snatched it in one hand and beamed back as she stood.

Henry held up four vials of a golden liquid when she appeared. Pru nodded and stuffed the leather into Melinda’s hands.

“Uh,” Melinda drawled. “It has to come _from_ him.”

“It did,” insisted Pru, hurriedly, barely listening to the statement. She moved to the cabinet where several athames were stored and grabbed with both hands. “Ready?” she asked, as she turned around to her cousins, who looked decidedly unready. They nodded, slowly, perhaps out of reflex.

Pru linked her arms through each of theirs, since her hands were full, and whisked them away from the Attic, into the cavernous depths of the Underworld.


	13. Wyatt V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one chapter today, and I might have to slow down updates for the next couple of months. Fall is stupid busy at work and home (so many birthdays and holidays all crammed into eight weeks, it's insane).

**Wyatt V**

The archway led to a wide passageway lined with thick, crumbling stone blocks. The only break in the extended expanse of light grey bricks came from lit torches hanging from metal sconces, and those, too, blended into obscurity. Dirt caked into the cracks of the blocks, forming inky black veins down the interior, but as Wyatt and Chris walked down the corridor, no dust stirred.

The scent of pepper hung heavy in the air, bringing tears to Wyatt’s eyes and causing Chris to sneeze (and sniffle) every couple of minutes. And, in the distance, there were hoarse screams.

Chris’ face formed something between a wince and a scowl. “Ominous,” he commented, leading the way.

Wyatt waited for the scream to die out and considered it carefully. “It doesn’t sound like the screamer is in pain. It’s more like…”

“Frustration?”

Wyatt bit off a smile. “I was going to say like trying to get dad to stop bringing teen slang home with him, but that works too.”

“Try living with Grandpa,” said Chris haughtily.

Wyatt couldn’t help but tease. “No thanks, I’ll stick with my apartment.”

Chris stopped in place, and as Wyatt passed him, he saw a deep scowl and knew not to dig any deeper into the subject. He knew Chris wasn’t proud to have moved in with their grandfather last year. He also knew Chris could be cantankerous when prodded, and when those two facts combined, Wyatt, well, Wyatt didn’t want to be in the Underworld if he pissed his brother off.

They walked in silence for a few minutes. They didn’t reach anything as definitive as a corner, but Wyatt was sure they’d changed directions at least twice. When the screams started up again, somehow just as far away as before, Wyatt resumed conversation.

“Why were you so eager to come with me?”

Casted across the wall to Wyatt’s left, Chris’ shadow shrugged.

“I come to the Underworld all the time,” he replied lazily, though both of them knew it was an exaggeration.

Wyatt focused his gaze on the shadow, since Chris wasn’t hurrying his pace, and Wyatt wanted to at least pretend at civility. “As a tagalong.” Wyatt pressed, ignoring Chris’ displeasure at ‘tagalong’, “You practically packed my bags for me.”

“Am I willing to brave the scary Underworld when a specific demon needs vanquishing? Yes. Do I think it’s stupid to traipse around here on a whim? Yes.” Chris’ rebuttal was instantaneous. As was his irritated scowl when his last two sentences echoed back at him.

“Uh,” Wyatt replied in an elongated sound because he could come up with the prefect, pithy retort in the scant seconds before Chris butted in. The hum was better anyway, Wyatt decided watching shadow Chris’ become visibly defensive, since it prolonged the moment wherein Chris called himself stupid.

“Look, everyone else comes down here when up there—not _Up There_ —the real world is too much to handle and they decide throwing themselves at danger is better than dealing with their problems.” Chris practically spat his response.

Wyatt let a few seconds pass and tried to sound casual. “That sounds like a Freudian Slip.”

Chris and his shadow froze for a moment. “Freud was overrated.”

“Melinda comes down here because she’s an Adrenaline Junkie. Junior comes down because _someone_ should watch Mel’s back and also because he’s a bit of an Adrenaline Junkie. Graces comes down because she’s trying to manage her fear, Astrid to help her, Pru because of a sense of duty, and _I_ come down here because the better we understand the Underworld, the safer we will be when we have to be here,” Wyatt explained quickly. “Nobody’s running from a problem except you.”

Chris said nothing.

“I don’t know what your problem is,” Wyatt admitted, feeling suddenly irritated, “But since you’re my backup down here, I think I deserve to know before more demons show up.”

To prove his point, Wyatt came to a sudden stop and turned around to face his brother. Chris met his gaze for a moment and then his entire body relented under the pressure.

“Bianca’s dating again.”

“You saw her or…?”

“I’m not stalking her. Grady said she still goes to the café across from his apartment and for the last two weeks, she’s been joined by the same man.”

Slightly regretting his decision to confront Chris’ issues whilst surrounded by beings that wanted them dead, Wyatt sacrificed a tease and moved the conversation along. “Part of breaking up is eventually seeing other people.”

“I know. It doesn’t mean I like to hear about it though.”

Giving a jerk of his head to their surroundings Wyatt stated, “If you know, then I’m not seeing the problem you don’t want to face. Besides the fact that your relationship is over—which you knew five months ago, when she dumped you and you had to move out of her apartment.”

Chris’ face twisted. He didn’t know either and the distant look in his eyes meant that he was too preoccupied with painful memories to find out.

Wyatt speculated in his head. Part of what made Chris and Bianca a committed couple was that Chris had always been a little reluctant with extraneous magic and Bianca had always needed to keep off the Phoenix Clan’s radar. Chris followed the new mandate like a religion. He protected his girlfriend and her mother by avoiding demonic attention whenever possible—and when it wasn’t, by systemically eliminating any eye witnesses. Frankly, it had been nice to see Chris with some direction in his life, even if most of the family agreed that they were fine if “Super Machine Chris” only had one cause to fight for.

“You’re overshooting,” Wyatt realized.

Chris stared at him, one eyebrow raised, and skepticism apparent.

“You avoided magic for years to protect Lynn and Bianca, so much that I think you took ‘avoiding magic’ into your being, because I don’t think you were quite that intense before you two started dating. And then, there wasn’t a Lynn and Bianca to protect. Now, I think you’re trying to convince yourself that you’re alright by acting your complete opposite.”

Chris blinked at him.

“That’s a load of shit.”

Wyatt let the insult pass without comment. Chris’ face hardened and Wyatt knew, once again, that the subject was better dropped.

They resumed their trek in silence.

Wyatt watched the blocks on the wall to his right with a frown. There was no way to tell how far they’d walked and this stretch of the passageway looked no different than any of the corridor they’d already travelled through. Wyatt reasoned it was entirely possible they were walking down one, extremely long hallway—anything was possible when magic was involved—but something felt off to him.

There wasn’t a sign of life other than the brothers, except for the screamer some distance away. Wyatt didn’t get the uneasy sense of being watched or the nervous clench in his stomach that indicated a battle was forthcoming. He might even go so far to say he felt _safe_. Safe and getting bored with grey bricks.

He’d been _invited_ here. The Sisters had chanted in _his_ head—he hadn’t made that up—until he indicated he understood their message. They _wanted_ to see him. 

So why was he getting nowhere?

Something niggled at him, and then, suddenly he knew.

“It’s you,” he said to his brother. “You’re the problem.”

Wyatt waved off Chris’ (reasonable) protest.

“They only admit Destined into their chamber. I can’t get in, because you’re not Destined.”

Chris reasonable protest became a deep-seated scowl.

“It could be a trap,” he argued, clearly choosing to refute Wyatt’s safety since he couldn’t challenge destiny.

Normally, Wyatt was a little more tactful when discussing his stature with his siblings, but he’d been walking for at least twenty minutes fruitlessly and felt rather foolish for it. “I can’t continue with you.”

“I’m not orbing back to the Manor,” Chris said before Wyatt could suggest it.

“There’s nowhere else for you to go.”

“Doesn’t matter,” grumbled Chris stubbornly. “If you’re right, then the entrance won’t be too far away—just out of my sight. I’ll wait here.”

Wyatt didn’t bother arguing further. The next couple steps forward, he watched his brother for movement, and when Chris only glared back at him, Wyatt faced fully forward and set out a hurried pace. Chris became a distant blur against grey stone and Wyatt was alone.

The screaming faded away, and as Wyatt walked further, the cracks between the stones took on a pinkish hue. After another thirty seconds, the crevices were red. Hesitatingly, he brushed his fingers against the wall. The substance was cool to the touch and too thick to be blood. Wyatt continued with an easier mind. The passageway ended with an archway formed between two doric columns. Wyatt stepped into the expanse without further perusal.

He had arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chris likes to keep his thoughts and feelings close to his chest and then along comes Wyatt and just dumps everything on the table, like the good brother he his.


	14. Henry II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not intend on missing Sunday's update, but I did. Sorry! It was thanksgiving and a busy weekend. Hopefully it doesn't happen again!

**Henry II  
**

_“A call unanswered, a challenge unmet,_

_A quarry who slipped the net._

_Conquered from your former home,_

_Lead us now; let us roam.”_

Melinda’s voice came to an end and the scrap of leather resting on her outstretched palm rose three inches in the air. Answering Henry’s question as to how the rectangular cloth would point them in the right direction—it not having a natural end as did the quill from last week—two corners of the leather folded underneath itself. The newly formed triangular end rotated forty-five degrees, down a dark passageway.

Henry wasn’t sure where in the Underworld Pru had beamed them. It wasn’t his usual landing spot, lacking the vertical crevice in one rocky wall in which he and Melinda had stashed (or rather, forgotten once and never grabbed again), three granola bars, a bottle of water, and a pair of brass knuckles slightly bent at the pinky finger. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Pru preferred a different area, although she had been with the two of them enough that she could have visualized it as a safe destination. He wondered how she’d come to chose this particular stretch of nondescript stone passageway. His thoughts then shifted to Wyatt and Chris, and where they favoured. He resolved to ask them when next they met. It would make a handy reference guide.

Pru moved past him silently, down the passageway indicated by the Pointer Spell. Melinda snatched the leather from the air in one quick motion. She crossed her arms, a frustrated frown crossed her face, and then she too moved forwards.

Henry joined them. “Hey,” he called out to Melinda. “Stay close in case I need to orb us in a hurry.”

He only heard a low muttering in response.

Up ahead, Pru was on a mission—well, at least half of her was. Her legs moved in quick, confident strides, each foot giving a solid clunk as shoe met stone. Her upper half, however, was entirely focused on the silver watch on her wrist.

Henry wasn’t used to leading. Oh, he gave his opinions when they were wanted (and when they weren’t), and he was perfectly willing to branch off own his own if the situation called for it, but in general, he was a Second-In-Command sort of man. But, after a quick, affirming glance to Completely-Preoccupied-Cousin-Number One and another at Liable-to-Explode-any-Moment-Cousin-Number-Two, he knew that this time, he needed to step up. He didn’t exactly like it.

Pru was no longer moving, giving Henry the impression that she’d reached another crossroads, so he increased his pace to catch up before he lost them both. As he neared Pru, however, the tunnel remained. Pru’s phone was in her hand, and he caught sight of what looked like a traffic map (was it intrusive if the surrounding darkness meant that her phone drew all attention first?). She glanced at her wrist again. Beside him, Melinda huffed.

Oh yeah, he _really_ didn’t like it.

“Let’s keep going,” he urged, also ushering his two cousins forward with his arms in case they weren’t listening.

They set off again. Melinda allowed the leather scrap to guide them every time they reached a fork in the passageway. Strangely, they encountered no one else.

“This is taking too long,” Pru declared after a quarter of an hour, when they met the third turn in a row. “We should go back and scry.”

Melinda beat Henry to a rebuttal.

“ _Scry_?” She gave a meaner-than-necessary snort. “For _evil_ in the _Underworld_? On what map?”

He probably should have been quicker to the draw.

Pru shot Melinda a glare over her shoulder. “He could be on the other side of the Underworld, wherever _that_ is. We might not make it in time on foot.”

“This was _your_ idea. You wanted to ‘wing it’, remember? This had to be done tonight, you said.”

“Innocents’ lives are at stake, Melinda. Who knows who he intends to go after next? Or when?”

“Sure. _That_ ’s the reason.”

Pru stopped suddenly and whirled around. Henry started to intervene, calm the waters a bit, but she spoke over him. “Excuse me?”

Undeterred, Melina looked Pru right in the eyes. “Right. This has nothing to do with getting back home as soon as possible. I’m sure you’re not even thinking about where Mike is right now.”

Henry took advantage of the ensuing silence to remind them that he was still there. He stepped in between them, literally and figuratively.

“We’re in a dangerous enough place as it is,” he said, swivelling his head to look at both of them. “You two sniping at each other isn’t helping.”

A subtle, insidious fear had taken root in his heart, like a moth squirming out of a cocoon. Instinctually, he tried to rebury it with platitudes, memories, and reassurances, but the moth kept squirming. He really needed his cousins to stop.

“Please.”

They looked at one another, leaning around him to achieve eyesight, and then up at him.

Pru nodded. Melinda held out the leather again, and let it rise.

While the spell worked, Henry took three, long breaths, letting all thoughts of the warehouse and the end of his world out with each exhale. At the end of the third, he opened his eyes, and readied himself once more.

The leather pointed left, and on they went.

Gradually, the ceiling rose and the passageway widened, until each was at least eighteen feet in length. The air grew musty and took on an unfamiliar smell, reminding Henry somewhat of areas and overhangs popular with pigeons. Sharp cries echoed in the distance.

Henry didn’t need to warn his cousins. Their shoulders tensed, and they moved to opposite walls, seeking the shelter of darkness. Henry joined Pru. They took shorter, quieter steps.

The end of the passage took them by surprise, opening up seemingly in the blink of an eye. Uneven rock walls stretched high above, beyond the limitations of human vision. If the Underworld was actually under the surface of the Earth, as opposed to on a plane adjacent to it, Henry was certain the cavern would have broken into the world above. Occasionally, large, uneven slabs of stone jutted out of the wall, and more than a few deep holes appeared to be carved out of the stone. Nestled on top of these slabs and faintly visible from the openings of the cavers were nests of tree branches, cardboard boxes, and tall grass. Each was at least six feet wide and, unfortunately for Henry and his cousins, each was occupied.

“Harpies?” whispered Melinda, hazel eyes wide.

Massive creatures inhabited the nests, with the torso and head of a woman, and the rest the product of avian nightmares. Their hair was a crest of long feathers, their nails ended in sharp points, and, as one shifted nearby, their talons could easily pierce a human throat.

The Book of Shadows had given him an entirely different impression of Harpies. Perhaps these were ancestors of the decidedly-more-human beings in the Book, or perhaps they were just an offshoot that hadn’t needed to adapt to the overworld. Henry didn’t really care to figure out.

Pru took a step backwards. “We need to leave,” she whispered urgently. “Don’t draw attention to yourself.”

He’d always considered her a bastion of reliability. Where he and Melinda argued over when they’d passed a gas station a mere three hours into their post-graduation road trip, Pru pulled out a full gas can neither of them had seen her pack. She remembered every important occasion, always called ahead, and generally make adult life look far simpler than it actually was.

Something was throwing her off today. Something, if Melinda was right, to do with Mike that had her barrelling down untrodden paths, changing her mind at the slightest hint of resistance, and missing important steps like silencing her cellphone before engaging in a stealth mission.

The opening riff of some Top-40 chart topper Henry couldn’t name racketed through the air, entirely too happy a tune considering it was about to get them killed. In an instant, the cavern was thrown into chaos. Harpies of all kinds, shapes, and colours shot into the air into a tornado of feathers. Then, before the three witches could even think about escaping, the harpies on the edge of the vortex hurtled down.

Henry quickly lost sight of anything that wasn’t feathers or claws. With no active power to use, he settled for keeping all of his blood in one place. A harpy swooped too low and he orbed a couple feet to the right. Another dropped, talons first, and he orbed to the left. Nails scratched at his throat. He orbed. The wind whipped his hair. He orbed. A screech sounded a little too loud for comfort. He orbed. Twice, he threw a potion. It didn’t hit the harpy he wanted, but in the crowded air, it was guaranteed to hit something at least. Mostly, he orbed.

Brilliant flashes of pink just far enough away to be inconvenient indicated Pru was doing much the same—though, she at least, actually had a power to use against them. Henry had no idea how Melinda was avoiding impalement, but he guessed it was the reason why she hadn’t yet frozen the area.

A grey harpy with white-tipped wings hurtled past him at an alarming speed. It flew—or rather, was forced to fly—backwards until it crashed into the wall, clipping two other harpies along the way. A roan harpy reversed mid-flight and became nothing more than a brown blur, crashing into harpy after harpy like a sick game of table tennis.

Henry supposed it made things easier for Pru, but he now had to deal with harpies trying to attack him and harpies trying to avoid their erratic sisters. He orbed again, a little further this time.

Melinda screamed loud enough to be heard over the roar of wings and shrieks of the bird-women-amalgamations. It brought Henry to an abrupt stop. An icy chill gripped his spine.

A harpy had his cousin by the shoulders, its talons embedded deep into her flesh. The harpy’s wings flapped faster to account for the added weight, and Melinda’s legs fought a fruitless fight. Her scream continued until there was a spastic jerk in her arms, almost involuntarily, and the scene froze. Melinda went limp.

“Pru!” Henry shouted, more for the sensation of screaming than any need to alert her. Pru was already darting around frozen wings and legs. “Get her down!”

While Pru found a decent vantage point, Henry pushed himself until he was staring up at the bottom of Melinda’s boots. Blood dripped onto his nose.

“Pru?” he shouted again, in an unfamiliar combination of confusion, anger, frustration, and fear.

“If I move them too fast, it’ll unfreeze everything,” she shouted back. The frantic hitch in her voice didn’t sooth the panic in his chest.

Harpy and witch began their descent. Henry counted the seconds in drops of blood: one, on his nose; two, on his left shoulder; three, a cool plip on the top of his head; four, onto his boot; five, into the palm of his hand; six, on the bridge of his nose, down the crevasse between nose and cheek, down the corner of his mouth bringing a taste of iron, and across his chin. Then, his hands were gripping under her knees and around her back.

“We need to get the talons out,” he said, though both of them understood that ‘we’ meant Pru.

She glided to his side, brown eyes practically unblinking at the harpy. “When I take them out, the freeze will break,” she warned.

“Now, Pru!”

She didn’t bother to respond. He felt her grip his elbow and he tensed, waiting. His palms were slick, and the panicky voice in his head was more than willing to remind him that it wasn’t from sweat. Pru made her move while he was in between breaths, acting so quickly, Henry barely recognized movement in his peripheral vision. He saw the sudden lack of talons in Melinda’s shoulders and then he saw an aura of pink.

The beam had barely deposited them onto a floor when Henry freed his hands and brought the bright glow of healing to his palms. He felt Pru’s grip on his elbow vanish and heard her kneel beside him.

The wounds were bad. He wasn’t sure if something important had been nicked, but knew that there was way too much blood, soaking into her shirt, on his hands, and pooling on the floor. He felt the drain as his magic attempted to re-knit muscle, ligament, bone, flesh, and skin.

“Come on, Mel,” he found himself whispering. “You can do it. Pull through. Wake up.”

Something in her left shoulder was misaligned. Henry grunted.

“You’re not going to let the crazy chicks win, are you?”

Her heart rate fumbled. He felt it like a sudden drop on a ski hill.

“You’re not going to let me get away with that terrible pun, are you?”

Beside him, Pru murmured Melinda’s name.

Melinda’s body jerked and Henry’s magic finally pulled through. He kept the magic active until he was sure the wound was closed, and then he held it for a couple seconds longer, just in case. Melinda mumbled something unintelligible, Henry sat back, and Pru laughed in relief. Pru hugged him with one hand, the other holding Melinda’s, and pressed her forehead against Henry’s shoulder.

“She’s okay?” Pru asked, because she was Pru and needed to be sure.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak for the moment. Anything he had to vocalize would be a garbled mess.

“That’s a hell of a gift, Junior,” she commented, full of affection and gratitude.

The world swam.

_Fourteen-year-old Henry sat in an old, well-worn chair. Rows upon rows of bookshelves, each crammed as much as possible with old and new spell tomes, power manuals, and dry histories of magical movements rested at his back. The long, wooden table in front of him stained with wax and ink sat his mother, Uncle Leo, and an older woman in golden robes._

_“That’s it?” he asked indignantly. “I finally get an active power, and_ that _’s it.”_

_“Henry Junior,” Paige growled in warning._

_Henry shook his shaggy head and turned to his mom. “You, Wyatt,_ and _Chris all get to orb stuff around. How come I don’t? I’m half-whitelighter too!”_

 _The Elder woman spoke up with the barest hint of impatience. “As I’ve explained, your mother and cousin were special cases: a Charmed One and the Twice Blessed. It is in their destiny. You, your sisters, and Christopher have been given some of the same gifts as whitelighters. If destiny permits, you may ascend in the future, but until then, you will only be_ part _Whitelighter._

 _“But why_ healing _?” Henry asked, his mouth forming a full pout._

_“One of Wyatt’s active power is telekinesis,” the Elder replied, correctly predicting the true intent behind Henry’s question. “That is why it manifests in the same way as your mother’s. What is your witch power?”_

_He scowled, both at his answer and at the fact that the woman was leading him like a broken mule. “Premonitions.”_

_“Are premonitions telekinesis?”_

_“No.”_

_Uncle Leo smothered a laugh, deepening Henry’s frown. The Elder, too, looked unamused._

_Leo smiled apologetically, and the Elder continued. “Then, without telekinesis, how can you orb telekinetically?_

_“But—”_

_The Elder shook her head. “There is nothing I can do, young Henry,” she said in a tone he did not appreciate. Then, she turned to address the woman at his left side. “Paige, I believe I’ve answered your questions. I must now take my leave.”_

_“Thank you, Sandra,” said Leo and echoed Paige._

_As the Elder orbed away, the two adults turned to Henry. Leo shot him a small smile._

_“Believe it or not, that is one the better meetings this family has had with an Elder,” he said jovially._

_Henry’s pout deepened even further. “It’s not fair,” he grumbled under his breath._

_Paige rolled her eyes. “It’s not the end of the world, Junior.”_

_“Why couldn’t I orb my premonitions or something? Anything other than healing?”_

_Leo chuckled lightly. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up in a smooth motion. “I’ll leave this to you, Paige.” To Henry, he added, “If you ever want some pointers, my office is open.”_

_Paige waved her hand. “It’s alright. Thanks for setting this up, Leo.”_

_Leo smiled again and left the library. Paige directed her attention to her eldest child and said in a firm voice, “You’re disappointed—I get that. I won’t tell you to just get over it—though it’s true—because I want you to understand one thing. One day you are going to be very glad to be able to heal. Sometime in the future, no matter how hard your Aunts and I try to keep it from happening, someone you love is going to get hurt and, on that day, you’ll be more grateful to heal than you ever would have to orb the remote into your hand.”_

_Henry’s pout lessened a little and Paige leaned back in her seat. Rubbing the top of her son’s head, she added, lightly and genuinely, “Healing’s a hell of a gift, Junior. You’ll see.”_

Henry blinked the last remnants of the promotion away. He smiled. “Yeah. It is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, technically harpies already appeared in the show, but they were background characters at best, and frankly had nothing harpy-ish about them, so I'm changing the lore a bit.


	15. Wyatt VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got my life in order, somewhat! Updates should be able to resume uninterrupted, though reduced to one chapter each, at least until December. December is a toss-up, at the moment. Thank you for your patience!

**Wyatt VI**

The Bloody Peak was, unfortunately, aptly named. How exactly a mountain had formed in the _Under_ world, Wyatt didn’t know, but his first thought that it was at least as tall as Mount Williamson, though he was also certain that the seeping darkness of underground tainted his perception. His third thought was that his sister would definitely try to climb it.

(And he would advise strongly against that particular conquest, since he could barely make out bottom, and from what he _could_ see, the lumbering shapes around the bottom third of the ascent had to be at least as tall as the Manor.)

Wyatt stepped back from the ledge and briefly contemplated heading back into the never-ending hallway that he now knew looped around and around inside the mountain before opening up to a sheer drop after a few feet of well trod dirt and a heart attack for the unsuspecting visitor. But, since the peak of the mountain was clearly visible from his position, his destination wasn’t far off as long as he managed to avoid stepping off the side of the winding trail.

The echoing darkness made the task difficult. The curtains of golden light shimmering in the air made it even worse when Wyatt found himself watching the magical, underground, un-Northern Lights instead of the placement of his feet. Worse yet was the deep groove carved on the inside of the trail, rounded at the bottom and filled with the same congealed red substance as the bricks inside. The area around it was sodden with overfill and slippery beneath his shoes.

He kept to the centre of the trail through one rotation, and then another, and another. Sweat formed at his brow and dripped down his temple. Wyatt felt salty perspiration collect on the shorn hairs above his upper lip and rubbed at the area with his sleeve, but the measure was only a stopgap. He pushed damp blonde hair away from his eyes.

As the trail winded to the top, the path underfoot became more rocky debris than dirt. Begrudgingly, Wyatt slowed his pace to compensate. Here and there a silver-barked tree had been forced to grow, but without proper sunlight, the trees were more stumps than anything.

The mountain flattened at its peak. A sparse grove of the pathetic vegetation held a wide, stone slab in the centre, and from it ran a creek of the red liquid (that Wyatt still maintained wasn’t actually blood, because if it was, boy, would his family have some choice words at him practically presenting himself neck open to a blatant sacrificial podium.

Wyatt turned his back on the beckoning platform to face a final set of the doric columns. This time, a shroud hung between them, and as Wyatt drew closer, he recognized it as snake skin, from a snake that was obviously larger than your run-of-the-mill python. Gingerly, Wyatt drew away the snake skin curtain, and knew at once that he had reached his destination.

A pool of water so translucent he might have thought it empty served as the centrepiece for a circular temple. Rocky outcroppings ringed the temple, gradually rising to the highest point directly across from the entrance. On the stone walls were chalky drawings similar to the columns, of women and monsters, sometimes fighting and sometimes at peace, and, at the centre, hanging from a noose formed from a triumphant snake, was the limp form of a man, crowned in laurel leaves and lifeless fingers losing their grip on a small harp.

Wyatt hoped he was projecting when he thought that the figure looked a little like him.

The Sisters of Themis stood from their reclined positions in the temple, and Wyatt’s first thought was that Melinda’s book hadn’t properly presented how terrifying they were up close. The Sisters stood at least a foot taller than him, and the horns on their heads were larger than dinner plates. Muscles bulged at their necks to support the weight, and the veins around their pupil-less eyes appeared permanently popped.

“Twice Blessed.”

Wyatt wasn’t sure which one greeted him, but her voice was deep and rumbled like a minor earthquake. He drew his gaze from their gowns (white and gold and thrown over the shoulder) to try and track them as they spoke.

“That’s me,” he agreed, stifling a nervous laugh.

They weren’t the nubile young women mythology would have let him believe, but he supposed if he’d been thrown from his home some thousand years ago by a mortal-turned-god so he could order the temple dedicated to himself, Wyatt might be a little angry too. Especially since storytellers later covered up that part of the tale by insisting the temple had been given to Apollo.

“He stole our Sisters, one by one, and when he fell, the mortals continued to do so until the Temple was destroyed.”

He caught the speaker this time, the one with the eyes of solid grey. Her skin was the darkest of the three and a perfectly-balanced scale hung from the curved end of each of her horns.

Wyatt wasn’t concerned that the Sisters could accurately predict his thoughts, or perhaps read his mind. He meant them no harm.

“Well,” he said, more than a little unsure of himself, “if it makes you feel any better, the gods eventually had their power sealed, and apart from a minor incident years ago, haven’t been heard from since.”

“We know,” said the one on the right, with coal black hair and eyes, chipped horns rotated opposite the other two, and a golden tint to her skin (which meant that his greeter was the white-eyed scowler at the other end, her hair braided with strips of red cloth and wearing a belt of snakeskin). “We Saw.”

“We also Saw him rise again through _you_ ,” said Black Eyes.

“Uh…” Wyatt tried to defend himself, but he didn’t know how to excuse an action he hadn’t taken yet.

“And we Saw him fight fruitlessly against his prison for unbroken millennia.”

Wyatt’s brow furrowed. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said, hating himself for every word. To his surprise, none of the Sisters seemed angry (well, angrier) with his statement, even White Eyes.

He thought Grey Eyes smiled at him, but it was the smile of a goddess towards the peons beneath her. “We Saw what he did, what he will do, and the actions he will never take.”

The three phases of premonitions, Wyatt remembered, but giving the declaration a name didn’t make it any less confusing. He understood now why the book had been so vague. The author probably didn’t understand it either.

“You want to know what we Saw of you,” stated White Eyes.

“My family is in danger from a demon called Malachy,” explained Wyatt to an audience that was probably already aware. “We haven’t found much about him. I was hoping you would help fill in the blanks, so to speak.”

Predictably, they gave no indication they cared.

“The time of supplicants demanding answers to insipid questions is over,” said Grey Eyes.

“I didn’t demand,” Wyatt insisted profusely. “You _called_ me here.”

Grey Eyes gave him a long stare and he forced himself to keep her gaze. “We See. We can share only what we See.”

“So, what did you see?” he asked, finally understanding what the being was trying to explain. They weren’t going to answer his questions but did seem willing to share something.

“Yours are among the eyes that peer into the End,” intoned Black Eyes.

“Death stalks your blood,” said White Eyes.

“Until the abyss swallows us all,” Grey Eyes finished.

Claxons screamed in his head. He hadn’t exactly expected good news, but this was something else.

“Can you be a little more specific?” he requested.

“No.”

“Why not?” He realized he was sticking his head into the snake’s mouth, but for his family, he’d do anything.

“Faces blend together. Only the Destined stand out.” Grey Eyes’ firm intonation gave the arrogant statement all the pomposity it required.

He practically tripped over his words to physically describe his family, but he barely got to his father’s greying hair before his voice petered out. They weren’t listening to him.

Suddenly, he tried to supress a grin, and mostly succeeded, but the smile died when he fished around in his pocket for his phone and found nothing. No, he’d left that important piece of technology at home on his desk.

“I can get pictures,” Wyatt suggested. “It would only take a minute, if you’d let me orb.”

White eyes smiled at him. Wyatt preferred the scowl.

“You have already made one pilgrimage to our chamber. You are not yet ready to pay the price for a second.”

Ice crawled up his spine and he simultaneously felt very foolish. The stone slab and the mysterious red substance that maybe was blood after all.

What could displaced oracles born thousands of years ago possibly _want_?

Realization came swiftly. The currency of the Underworld was powers, that much he knew, and the Bloody Peak was made, not (super)naturally formed. Therefore, the impressive magic that hummed through the place was not native to the area either. The Sisters required magic to keep their operation running. He guessed it was the only way upper level demons hadn’t claimed the point for their own yet.

Wyatt gave the beings a quick glance. The first thing a powerful conqueror would do was enslave the previous, all-seeing hosts.

The Sisters were serious about payment. They had to be.

“Which power do you want?” he asked and hoped his voice didn’t sound as weak to them as it did to him.

Grey Eyes gave a short shake of her head. The scales jangled against her horns. She pointed to the pool in the centre of the temple. “Only the Water knows.”

Wyatt’s first impulse was to run. His high school and collegiate baseball career would come in handy, and he would just slide down the mountain to skip a rotation or two if he needed. The Sisters were tall and probably fast, but their height and weighty heads had to be a disadvantage on the meager trail. He’d get through the archway, into the hallway and then…

And then he’d be trapped. He sighed.

“You can offer a power to the pool, or you and your brother can spend a decade in the Antechamber before we tire of your screaming and take all of your magic,” explained Black Eyes.

The stone slab flashed through his mind again. He balanced it out with a look to the pool.

What if it took his ability to heal? Or orb? How could he protect his family, his charge, or innocents? Could he live with not being able to sense his loved one’s auras? Was he willing to accept losing telekinesis, or the protective bubble? And then there was his heat wave to think about. And projection.

Despite himself, he choked on a laugh. If his siblings or cousins could hear him waxing poetic about his “unreasonable, ridiculous, basically a zoo, unbelievable at this point, how is that even fair” (their words, not his) litany of powers, he’d never hear the end of it.

Well, once they found out he gave one of his powers away, he wouldn’t hear the end of it anyway.

Feeling the weight of his decision in every step, Wyatt drew up to the pool and looked down automatically. He couldn’t see a bottom since even the light failed to reach the lowest point, but he could tell it was deep.

“How does this work?” he asked.

Black Eyes produced an earthenware cup from a crevice in the stone wall and pushed it into his hands. “Drink.”

Wyatt filled the cup from the pool, careful not to let his fingers touch the water in case, well, he couldn’t think of a case, he was just uneasy enough with the situation that his mind had gone into protective overdrive. While a voice in his head that sounded like his brother shouted “stupid” at him repeatedly, Wyatt drained the cup in a single gulp and he shuddered.

An icy chill flowed down his throat and into his stomach. From there, the biting cold moved through his bloodstream and all over his body like frost crept across a window. He exhaled slowly. The frosty vapour swirled in a vortex in front of his face and then flew into a translucent glass ball in Grey Eyes’ outstretched hand. She nodded at him, and he took that as his que to leave.

The exhale had taken all of the chill out of his body but he couldn’t help rubbing his arms as he ducked through the snakeskin veil. He travelled down the path at a light jog, testing his magic as he ran. To his immense relief, his hands still summoned the golden light of healing and he successfully orbed a pebble into his hand. He wouldn’t be able to try regular orbing until they returned to the edge of the battlefield, sensing until he was out of the Underworld, and he didn’t want to attempt a heat wave until he was out of the Sisters’ sight, lest they mistake it for an attack.

He made it to the hallway entrance before he could come up with an explanation for Chris’ no-doubt fervent exasperation.

The hallway was empty, even when he ran for several minutes. Panic began to set it, especially once he caught sight of the fresh coat of red in between the bricks.

“Chris!” Wyatt shouted, as loud as he could manage. His shout echoed back at him. He tried again, drawing out the one-syllable name over the course of several seconds.

Finally, footsteps sounded in the distance. Wyatt took off in a sprint. As he drew closer, he noted the irregular beat to the footsteps and guessed he was chasing after multiple people.

Chris appeared with a hurried shout, followed by a demon with four arms. An _angry_ demon with four arms. When he was close enough, Chris slid past Wyatt, shouting as he did so, “Get him!”

Wyatt flung up his hands out of reflex and an inferno blasted outwards. The demon was caught in the flash and left only a soot mark on the brick when the wave ripped through.

He checked one more power off of his mental list.

Chris popped up in front of him, panting hard. His bottom lip was split on the right and swelling fast. “He wouldn’t vanquish,” Chris explained, scowling at his lisp and jerking with his thumb to where the demon used to be. “What did you learn?”

Wyatt shook his head. “Not much,” he admitted dismally. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“I’ve been walking for an hour. There’s no exit.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem anymore. The toll has been paid.”

Sure enough, the archway appeared after barely a minute of walking. The battlefield appeared hardly changed. Clangs and grunts sounded like clockwork. Just like before, Wyatt stuck to the sidelines. He just needed to get a little further, and then he could (try to) orb.

The sniffing demon shambled out of nowhere, and in an instant Wyatt learned that he’d lost his power of Projection. Frustrated, tired, and feeling a little sick to stomach, Wyatt grabbed his brother’s arm.

“Run!”

They ran. Wyatt attempted to orb away with every step and felt relief when the orbs finally took them away.

Back in his apartment, Wyatt let out a sigh. The ordeal was over. Now it was time to deal with the consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Yep. I did that. Wyatt is massively over-powered, which isn't very fun to write, and I prefer my protags as underdogs, so...  
> 2) The original idea for the three phases of premonitions was absolutely influenced by Galadriel in lotr ("things that are, things that were, and some things that have not yet come to pass" which I used to misremember as "things that will not come to pass").   
> 3) I snuck in a mention of my next gen god/desses aesthetic, which you can find on my tumblr.


	16. Pru V

**Pru V**

They ate breakfast at the counter. Mike sat at the end, with his tablet open, preparing for the work day ahead. Pru chose the middle seat. She could stare straight ahead at the refrigerator and pretend nothing was amiss. The spectre of last night’s conversation haunted the third seat.

_“What the hell happened here? Are you alright?”_

_“Mike, I…”_

_“Oh god. The apartment is a—were we robbed?”_

_“I’m_ really _sorry.”_

_“What for? There’s no way you could have done this.”_

_“My cousins—well—_

_You see—_

_I’m really, really sorry.”_

_“Pru, slow down. What happened? What about your cousins?”_

_“They… had too much to drink, and…”_

_“Destroyed everything they could reach???”_

_“I’m so sorry. I should have stopped them.”_

She hadn’t meant to lie, especially a lie that threw her cousins under the bus when they’d given up their evening (and nearly a life, in Melinda’s case) to help her. Dates were cancelled without complaint and a girlfriend was abandoned. But, when the time came, she couldn’t think of anything, much less the truth, and said basically the first thing to come to mind.

Mike was, well, he was pissed and trying not to take it out on her. Pru couldn’t blame him. As far as he knew, her cousins had caused at least two thousand dollars in damage in a drunken stupor and didn’t even have the decency to apologize to him. The night had been long and sleepless, with Mike stewing over human decency and Pru worried that each creak was the demon ready for round two.

“I’ll replace everything, some today, some next week. It might take me a couple months but I promise I will, down to the last coffee cup,” Pru promised for the third time.

Mike closed his document, finally giving up on pretending it was a normal morning. “You shouldn’t be the one replacing everything. _Henry and Melinda_ should.”

Each thump of her heart was a reverberation of guilt. “They can’t afford that.”

“Well then, maybe they should have stopped after the first beer.” Mike sighed in frustration and ran his hands through his hair. He stood up in a huff, grabbed his tablet, and then floundered. His mouth opened to say something, and abruptly closed. Then, again, open and close.

“I’ll get off work a little early and we’ll grab the essentials, okay? Does seven work for you?”

Pru nodded dimly, unsure of what else to say. She accepted his goodbye kiss with another wave of guilt.

‘After the demon is vanquished, and I know we’re safe,’ she thought. ‘I’ll tell him everything.’

It was the only way she got through the day.

The work day crawled by on broken knees. She completed small work tasks mechanically and didn’t even attempt to work on anything more complicated than paperwork duplications. In a perfect world she would have thrown herself into her work, leaving her demons for 5pm, but clearly this was not a perfect world.

This was a world where she filled six bags with debris and then met her boyfriend at a kitchenware store to fill their now nearly-empty apartment.

“I have a coffee maker and a rice cooker on my list,” Mike said without looking up from his phone as Pru approached. It may have just been wishful thinking, but Pru thought there was bit of humour in his voice when he mentioned the coffee maker. “Anything else?”

“You never used the rice cooker in the first place,” noted Pru, careful to avoid the appearance of criticism. “Scrap it and we can have coffee and espresso in the morning.”

Mike sent her a small smile. To Pru, it meant the world. “My mother gave me that rice cooker. She will expect to see it when she visits.”

They held hands as they entered the store, and even worked their way up to friendly banter (over what else, but coffee). Warmth gradually returned to Pru’s heart, soothing the cold push of dread. And then, in an instant, the happiness was gone.

Standing below a towering display of galvanized canning pots and drawing only the slightest bit of attention was the Demon. He smirked at her.

Pru stopped short. It was only after Mike had turned towards her, searching left and right for whatever had drawn her attention that she remembered not to make her panic so obvious. She tried desperately to not stare at the demon—lest Mike follow her gaze—and yet keep the demon in sight—so he didn’t pull off a sneak attack.

Beside her, Mike pulled a candy thermometer off of the hook and studied it curiously, no doubt attempting to determine just what about it Pru was so enamored with. Pru found herself fumbling through her purse. She shoved her wallet into Mike’s hands with too much force, knocking the candy thermometer to the floor.

“I have to go,” she said hurriedly, thinking of a lie as she spoke. “Something tripped the alarm at _My Thai_. My card is in there. You know the number. I’ll see you at home.”

She didn’t kiss him. Mike stared at her. She didn’t like the look on his face, but the demon was moving forward and Pru didn’t have time to worry. She turned swiftly on her heel and ducked down the adjoining aisle with a wordless prayer that the demon follow her—and not her confused boyfriend.

Pru caught a flash of leather behind her and quickened her pace. She flew out of the store practically at a run and then darted down the short alleyway leading up to the store’s docking bay. As the demon rounded the corner, she lunged. Pru’s fingers curled around his bicep and she beamed.

The demon blocked her view when they reformed, but Pru was pretty sure that her cousins’ faces flashed from an amiable greeting (and perhaps a fervent request to move out of the way of the tv) as the light from the beam died down and they noted the extra presence in the room, to attack mode.

“Freeze him,” she gasped, hopefully in time.

Melinda must have done so, because the demon’s head and neck were suddenly rotated at an uncomfortable angle. Pru backed away quickly and joined her cousins.

“Harpy skin,” Henry murmured, staring at the demon’s clothes. “Your tracking spell worked, Mel, just not in the way we wanted it to.”

Up close, and with the memory of yesterday’s attack fresh in her mind, Pru noted that parts of the demon’s coat were made out of the plucked skin of a Harpy. An involuntary shudder shook through her. The coat was a trophy.

“I guess we should be grateful Pru didn’t grab that piece of ogre hide there?” commented Melinda, pointing to a spot on the demon’s elbow.

“I think I see dragon scales.”

“Guys!” Pru said harshly. “Not the time! He’s fighting the freeze!”

Henry set his bowl of cereal down just as the demon’s form sluggishly resumed a standing position. The freeze wore off completely and he turned to them.

Pru telekinetically threw the nearest solid object within sight. The tall, clear glass of amber liquid flew off of the coffee table into the demon’s temple. He growled.

Melinda darted forward, rotated on one foot and swung the other.

“Defend me!” the demon shouted, slightly garbled and frustrated.

Melinda’s body froze, right foot brushing the demon’s ear. She dropped the leg and twirled around. Pru barely had time to register the motion before Melinda’s fist was flying at her face. Pru used her power out of reflex, though without the reactionary time needed, it was more of a splat than a push. Melinda stumbled back two paces.

“Mel?” Pru asked at the same time Henry did in a slightly more accusatory tone.

Melinda, however, looked just as baffled. Her eyes screamed for help as she pulled her fist back. Pru deflected the blow, and the one after it, but missed the third punch. Melinda’s fist slammed into Pru’s face. Pru felt rather than heard the bones in her nose break. Blood swelled immediately. Henry flew across Pru’s strained vision, tackling Melinda.

Water sprang to Pru’s eyes. The pain was immense. She clutched her nose, but the pressure did little to stifle the blood flow. All it did was jostle her nasal bones. She blinked back tears.

At her feet, Henry struggled against their cousin. His long arms and legs kept him out of range of a headbutt, but Melinda squirmed with such vigor Pru was surprised Henry was able to maintain his hold even with a fifty-some-pound advantage. He swore.

The demon took a step forward, one foot reared back in a position to kick Henry. Pru sent him down the hallway instead.

With another grumbled curse, Henry suddenly took his right hand off of Melinda’s forearm and grabbed at Pru’s foot. Melinda swiped over his head, and on the return pass, brought her hand in and angled her elbow out. Pru wanted to warn Henry, but he’d already pulled them into an orb.

They reformed in the Manor’s attic and Melinda immediately went slack. Still, Henry and Pru backed away for good measure. Melinda sat up, looking dazed, then horrified.

When Melinda made no move to attack them again, Henry pulled himself up and wordlessly healed Pru’s nose.

“I didn’t do that!” protested Melinda. She frowned. “Well, I did, but I didn’t mean to! My body moved on its own.”

Henry panted. Pru’s collar was stained with blood.

“I swear!”

“Just stay where you are,” Henry said, pointing at her. Pru could tell he didn’t mean it in an angry way—his voice was far too soft for that—but pain flashed across Melinda’s face anyway. She nodded mutely.

Henry moved to the Book and began flipping. Pru patted at her pockets, hoping for her phone and the potion recipes she had saved on it. Instead, she only found a thin sheet of paper. Pru frowned deeply as she unfolded it. The world seemed to shrink. It was the paper the demon had given her—and that Pru had taken through no intention of her own—the day before. She didn’t remember transferring it from her vest pocket to her pants this morning, but here it was.

“Say the spell and I’ll let you live longer than the rest,” she read aloud, drawing her cousins’ attention. The words were more of a scribble, shaky and uneven, and beneath ‘longer’ was ‘regnol’ hastily crossed out twice.

“What?”

Pru held up the paper, even though it was too far away for either of them to read. “He gave me this yesterday. I don’t know why I have it,” she explained, barely loud enough for anyone to hear.

Melinda nodded at her, somewhat excitedly, like she agreed with Pru, but it was Henry’s look that Pru didn’t like: exasperated, confused, and hurt. “You don’t know why you have it?”

“I just took it. It wasn’t my decision.”

Evidently deciding that since Pru was also in her boat, she wasn’t in the doghouse anymore, Melinda stood. She let Pru flip the paper once more, so that the writing was visible to them, and peered over Pru’s shoulder. In a moment, Henry joined them, sparing any need for Pru to mistakenly activate the spell.

“’Right the wrong, not right to left?” quoted Henry as if he was unsure of what the third line actually was.

“Right to left,” Pru muttered to herself. “Right the wrong.” She reread the spell again and snippets of their previous fight flashed through her mind.

“Backwards,” she concluded breathlessly. “He speaks and writes backwards. See, he had trouble with ‘longer.’ That’s why his voice sounds so odd.”

Melinda drifted, not to the Book of Shadows, but to the small bookcase beyond it. She pulled out a thick tome, the one Melinda had practically thrown to Pru yesterday after the Book of Shadows turned up nothing. Melinda moved with surety. She flipped half the pages in one go and then individually for several seconds.

“Turik,” she announced, placing the tome over the Book of Shadows and beckoning them over to the podium. Pru peered at the page. There wasn’t a drawing, which would explain why Pru hadn’t given it the attention it properly deserved (‘Never again,’ she thought solemnly).

“A veteran of—and widely believed to be _the instigator_ of the Demonic Civil War of 1467, Turik was the forerunner for the position of the Source of All Evil, once the current occupant was assassinated, of course. Neither witch, nor mortal, nor demon could deny his commands once uttered. Even his own body was not immune: limbs regrew and wounds closed with only a single word: Heal. At the cost of her own life, Marjorie Rhodes, the eldest scion of the Rhodes family, then the mightiest of all witch families, managed to curse Turik in 1592 so that he could only communicate backwards. It slowed him down. To date, he seeks a witch powerful enough to reverse the spell.”

“ _It_ slowed _him down_?” quoted Melinda, aghast, at the same time Henry ordered, “You can’t say that spell, Pru.”

“Obviously,” Pru agreed, somewhat dryly. “He must not be able to say ‘say’ backwards—to him, forwards for us, otherwise he would have ordered me to yesterday. But there are many synonyms of said that also apply to spells: cast, recite, chant, utter—"

She swallowed the rest of her sentence. Henry’s fingers hovered over her mouth. “Let’s not give Turik any more help, yeah?” he said.

“So, our greatest threat at the moment is a _thesaurus_?” complained Melinda. “How do I fight a thesaurus?”

“Punch it really hard in the spine,” answered Henry immediately.

“Like this?”

“Oh yeah, absolutely.”

Despite herself, Pru smiled, wistful and amused at once. She was going to miss them. Mike was wonderful, but he couldn’t replace them. No one else could cannonball directly into trouble quite the same, and flop around in turbulent waters until there, in the midst of whirlpools and cresting waves was a different vortex, a chaos of their own. Everyone else drowned and they said, “We’ve always breathed water.”

“Guys,” she interrupted. Nostalgia didn’t mean it wasn’t also annoying (and generally unhelpful) in a crisis. “The demon could be here any minute.”

Melinda ceased pantomiming a kick to the book that helped them identify Turik, which was held by Henry, spine out.

“Game plan?”

Henry hummed. “We know who he is now. We could write a spell.”

Pru shook her head. “We don’t have time.”

“Then we stab him,” suggested Melinda. “Hold him down and gag him so he can’t make himself heal.”

It wasn’t the greatest idea—wasn’t even good, frankly, but Pru wasn’t in a position to come up with anything different. “And until we gag him?”

A wry smile crossed Melinda’s lips. “We can’t obey what we can’t hear. We have bags of ear plugs at home from Henry’s work.”

“The new neighbour has loud sex,” the man in question explained simply.

Feeling a surge of adrenaline, Pru ran her fingers through her hair and nodded. “Go get them,” she told Henry. He nodded and disappeared into a swirl of blue and white lights.

While Melinda busied herself with pulling what appeared to be every weapon in the Attic out, including a leather-handled dirk hidden in the light fixture, Pru’s thoughts drifted back to the entry on the demon—her demon.

“Why me?” she asked quietly. “Why would he come after me? Why not the Charmed Ones? Or Wyatt?”

Melinda was silent for a moment. She sent Pru a strange look, tinged in disbelief and something else Pru couldn’t quite figure out. “Maybe he figured that the Charmed Ones and the Twice Blessed were too powerful. Maybe they’d be able to vanquish him. Maybe you were the best of both worlds.”

‘Jealousy,’ realized Pru. That was the look in Mel’s eyes. ‘Disbelief and jealousy.’

“Mel—” Pru began before a shimmer and an orb cut her off.

Pru slammed her hands over her ears. Melinda froze the room. Henry placed two ear plugs into each of their hands and they hurriedly stuffed them into their ears.

Melinda surged forward again, and this time Pru could practically hear the satisfaction in her cousin’s smile when the scuffed boot met the demon’s cheek. Turik crumpled out of the freeze. Melinda swept low, catching the demon under his uneven feet, and he fell to the floor. His lips moved. Melinda stuck her tongue out.

Meanwhile, Pru and Henry searched for the crystals to make a cage and something to gag the demon with, since Melinda had only gathered a third of the required components to their plan. They worked quickly, mindful of the muffled ‘oophs’ and crashes behind them, and then turned around. Pru had the box of crystals in her hand, Henry tested a thin length of nylon, and Melinda—

Melinda took a glancing blow to the ear. She didn’t notice the small piece of orange rubber fall out her ear (no doubt too preoccupied with the sudden ringing in her head if Pru’s recent memory was any indication), but Pru did, and so did the demon.

His lips moved again and Pru’s heart sank when Melinda twisted on her feet to face Pru and Henry. This time, Mel threw herself at Henry, who was slightly in front of Pru.

Pru nestled the box securely under her arm and faced Turik. She needed to vanquish him. That was the priority. Her eyes found the pile of athames and daggers and she sent three of them spinning at the demon. He shimmered in the air and the knives passed through him. Pru raised three more.

Turik straightened, suddenly unconcerned with the weapons pointed directly at him. He smiled and mimicked pulling something out of his ears.

Furiously, Pru shook her head. The demon’s smile widened.

Melinda and Henry walked past Pru, in step, and stopped in front of the demon. They turned to face her. An athame gleamed in both of their hands.

Pru wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to vomit. She stood stock still, unable to make the first move against her cousins. Her _cousins_. Two parts to her trifecta, only a few months younger than her, and a presence in practically every memory she had of her teenage years. They’d partied together, studied together, learned to drive in the same beat-up truck of Uncle Leo’s. She’d turned to them when a classmate had stolen her term paper, and they’d helped her prepare for every job interview. They’d even been there when she first met Mike, three years ago, at trivia night at a bar just off of campus. Every eye had been drawn to the two of them, drunkenly shouting out answers and giggling at the buzzer, but only Mike’s had shifted to her. She couldn’t hurt them.

Meaning to force the athames out of her cousins’ hands, Pru squinted, but Henry and Melinda only tightened their grip. Pru found Turik’s gaze. He raised an eyebrow and said something.

Pru braced herself. She’d use the cage on her cousins if she had to, but she would not conquer them.

In unison, Henry and Melinda raised their right hands which clutched an athame and brought the blade to their own throats. Icy terror bubbled in her chest. “No,” she pleaded again and again, inaudible to her, but amusing to the demon and inconsequential to the witches under his sway. She didn’t need to hear Turik to know what he was offering: the spell for her cousins' lives.

With shaking hands, Pru pulled the paper out of her pockets once more. She closed her eyes and sobbed once as she beamed away.

Her chest heaved under the pressure of shuddering sobs. She felt her mouth move, yell for her mother, and then babble when Phoebe appeared at the landing of the stairs in Pru’s childhood home. Phoebe gently pulled the plugs from Pru’s ears, but Pru was too far gone in terror to hear anything. She just spoke in an endless rush of the past two day’s events.

Phoebe’s face grew concerned and terrified. She called for Paige, there was a hurried explanation, and then the three of them were orbing to Three’s. Piper joined them. They orbed back to the Attic.

Pru didn’t want to look—didn’t want to see her cousins’ throats slit, their bodies motionless in a puddle of their own blood, fingers slightly curled in death, and eyes vacant—so she missed the first few seconds of the battle.

She heard her Aunt Paige’s voice and saw a flash of blue, but no cry of anguish. Nothing to indicate that her only son was dead, so Pru looked up.

Melinda and Henry fell to their knees, and then over to opposite sides. Before she crashed to the floor, Pru caught sight of a red gash across part (and only part) of Melinda’s throat. Pru catapulted herself beside them and her hands immediately closed over their necks.

Paige’s hands glowed on top of Pru’s. At her Aunt’s nod, Pru tentatively pulled her hands back. It was hard to see under the blood, but the wounds were closed and Pru heard, clearly once more, the distinct sounds of their breath: Henry’s slightly nasally and Melinda’s huff of an exhale.

Paige joined her sisters. Pru sat beside her cousins, feeling more than a little useless, as her mother and Aunts battled Turik. Paige orbed the cast iron potions pot at the demon’s head, Phoebe weakened his defenses with a levitated kick to the teeth, and while he gurgled on blood, Piper flicked her hands once. Then, Turik was nothing more than a scuff on the floor.

Silence and disappointment.

Pru just breathed.


	17. The Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've been frustrated at the kids for their less-than-stellar planning, this chapter may bring catharsis.

**The Aftermath**

Five witches sat on a soft, cream-coloured couch in the Sun Room, bloodied and bruised: Wyatt downcast, Chris wincing from behind a swollen lip, Pru tired and her shirt and hands splashed with blood, and the recently un-catatonic Henry and Melinda, sluggish, pale, and shirts turned red.

Three mother/witches stood in front of them, livid and extra livid.

“Someone explain. Now,” demanded Piper, hands on hips and lips pursed.

Henry Junior opened his mouth slowly. “Not you,” Piper clarified, pointing to the two witches at the end of the couch. Henry’s mouth closed just as slowly and Melinda’s head drooped onto Henry’s shoulder. “You two can barely keep your eyes open.”

“And not you, Chris,” the eldest Charmed One added, before he could intervene. “I don’t want excuses. I don’t want obfuscations. I don’t want to hear ‘just’s’ and ‘only’s’ and ‘you never said not to’s’. I want the truth.”

Wyatt and Pru squirmed under the weight of disappointment—and that was what it was, disappointment. Chris, Melinda, and Henry drew irate faces and furious sighs, because they’d been here before, in one form or another. But those two? Well behaved children (mostly), responsible (comparatively) teens, and diligent adults.

‘Or you were supposed to be,’ suggested their mothers and aunts’ eyes.

“I—”

Pru started to explain, but a movement from Piper interrupted her. Piper stepped over to the other end of the couch and held her daughter’s chin in her hands.

“You’re very pale,” she said, softly, to Melinda, who blinked owlishly at her. “Hold on a minute, Pru,” Piper ordered, and exited the room.

“They lost a lot of blood,” explained Paige for the benefit of everyone, since no one seemed to know just what exactly happened. She frowned at her niece. “I thought I orbed the knives out of their hands at the same time, but maybe Melinda’s cut deeper. She looks worse than Junior.”

Pru shook her head once. “That’s not it,” she denied quietly.

“Wait for Piper,” Phoebe suggested and Pru nodded, unable to look her mother in the eye.

Piper returned a minute later with a tray of juice, glasses, and a plastic container of cookies. She handled them out silently, taking extra care with her daughter and nephew so that they had a firm grip on the glass before letting go. “Drink,” she ordered.

It was more for the benefit of Henry and Melinda, they realized, and guessed Piper didn’t have the heart—or the will—to bring snacks to just the two of them. So, the (grown) kids gulped down sweetened tea and Piper practically shoved a handful of cookies down Henry and Melinda’s throats.

When the Charmed Ones were satisfied two of their kids weren’t going to faint imminently, their faces grew tense once more. Phoebe nodded at Pru.

“Turik attacked me yesterday while I was unpacking. I fought him off and then asked Hen and Mel for help. I was in too much of a hurry. Mel wanted something of his, and I grabbed a piece of his coat only it led us to a harpy nest. One of them… grabbed Mel. We beamed out and Henry healed her.”

Piper inhaled sharply.

“And then today, the demon attacked again. We ended up in the attic. Turik, he can—when he says something, you have to follow it.”

“Compulsion,” annotated Paige with a frown.

“Yeah,” nodded Pru. “He got to Mel and Henry—made them threaten to kill themselves so I’d break the spell that a witch put on him hundreds of years ago that made him speak backwards. And then I came to you and…” She trailed off.

“I orbed the knives out of Junior and Mel’s hands—barely in time,” said Paige.

“And we vanquished Turik,” added Piper, unamused.

Phoebe flew forward to hold her daughter’s hands. “Why didn’t you come get us sooner?”

“I thought the three of us could get it done faster. I thought I’d be more efficient. I was so _stupid_ ,” admitted Pru shamefully.

Phoebe drew Pru into her arms and stroked Pru’s hair. She didn’t deny anything but made soothing sounds in the back of her throat.

“Next!” called out Piper to her eldest child. “Where were you during all this? Why has Chris avoided me all day?”

Wyatt shared a glance with his brother. He winced and then sighed, resigned at the gates of Hell. “I was, um, called by the Sisters of Themis. They used to be oracles but Apollo kicked them out and they moved to the Underworld. They offered to tell me information, and since we didn’t know much about Malachy, Chris and I thought it would be worth a look, at least.”

Piper’s gaze momentarily flickered to her middle child, who shifted against the couch cushions.

“They would only speak to me,” continued Wyatt, drawing attention back to him. “Because I was Destined.”

“And you agreed!?” Piper was angry and aghast all at once.

“We needed _something_! And besides, I knew they wouldn’t attack. I’m not even sure they _can_ attack someone.”

“I bet those horns could,” commented Chris under his breath. He stiffened at Piper’s baleful look. “I was half an orb away if Wyatt got into trouble.”

“He was already in trouble!”

“Aunt Phoebe, it sounds worse than it was. Sure, it was a little tricky finding the place, but the Bloody Peak was actually quite peaceful for the Underworld.”

“You _voluntarily_ went to a place called the _Bloody Peak_?”

“Didn’t I mention that?” said Wyatt weakly.

The only response was three harried sighs. “What information did they give you?” asked Paige to move the conversation along.

Wyatt seemed to shrink even further. “Something bad is coming.”

There was moment of silence.

“So, all you learned was that Malachy exists, and is making plans.”

Chris snorted. “Pretty much.”

“You risked your lives for nothing?” seethed Piper.

“We didn’t know that at the time!” came Wyatt’s feeble defense.

“I am very, very angry,” declared Piper.

“I know that.” In Chris’ voice, it would have been impertinent, in Melinda’s, insolent, but in Wyatt’s it was sincere.

Wyatt’s self admonishment seemed to take the wind of Piper’s sails, and with her gradually calming, the other two Charmed Ones softened as well. Paige refilled Henry and Melinda’s glasses and Phoebe procured a wet cloth from the bathroom to rub the blood away from Pru’s hands and nose.

Pru gently detached herself from Phoebe. “I should leave,” she said, with a wary look towards her Aunt Piper in case the woman took offense. “I abandoned Mike in the middle of the baking aisle. He probably wants an explanation.”

Phoebe nodded. “You might want to change your shirt first.”

Pru looked down at the garment, blood stains seeping through the lilac coloured fabric. “I have a sweater in my car, which hopefully hasn’t been towed away,” she said with a groan.

Pru made her goodbyes and then left. Phoebe slid into her place on the couch. Before anyone else could attempt to leave (namely Wyatt and Chris, since no one doubted Piper would make the other two stay for at least an hour longer until their colour returned), Paige suddenly hummed.

“What did they want in exchange?” Paige asked, looking directly at Wyatt.

He stilled immediately and tried to play dumb. “Hm?”

“The ex-oracles. What did they want in exchange for the information?”

Wyatt winced in a long, drawn-out motion that only drew greater attention to his discomfort.

“Wyatt?” pressed Piper warningly.

“One of my powers,” he answered, finally. “They took one of my powers.”


	18. Pru VI

**Pru VI**

In the short walk from her car, through the parking lot, into the lobby, a brief intermission waiting in the elevator and down the short hallway before Apartment 707, Pru rehearsed her speech in her head. Mike was a practical man. The thought made Pru frown. A _practical_ character brought to mind the downtrodden and simple, who looked no further than their own backyard, which was rather a limited view to take. Mike didn’t lack ambition or drama; rather, he saw steps to take instead of a leap of faith. Luck didn’t ace exams, revision did. Fortune favoured the bold, because opportunities favoured the bold (as did failure, which wasn’t nearly as motivational). Destiny didn’t dictate paths, people did through choices. It didn’t even matter that he was wrong on most of those accounts, because revision, opportunity, and choices were the way things worked in the mortal world.

And Mike, for better or worse, was wholly mortal.

So Pru didn’t fault him for his lack of faith. He worked hard, took responsibility for his actions, and continually looked to explain the ‘whys’ of the universe, all in accordance with his logical, scientific outlook on the world. These were the characteristics of men who would do great things; they were also facets that would make Pru’s world very difficult in the next hour.

“I’m a witch. Most of my family are witches, and Henry and Melinda didn’t break your furniture, a demon did in an attempt to hurt me.”

It was better to get it out immediately, no dawdling. After all, he was used to grandstanding, and any attempt to obfuscate would have him picking at the seams. Pru wasn’t sure exactly what his response would be to her opening statement. “I’m waiting for the punchline,” seemed like a safe bet, as did abject disbelief.

A visible display would be in order. This, at least, would be easy. She would levitate his tablet, adjust his tie without hands, or perhaps simply beam in place.

Then, hopefully, a gradual explanation: answering questions, sharing the family history and their magical responsibilities, and maybe even getting into a few of the ‘whys’ (including a few of her peculiarities he’d long since given up understanding like why she kept a paper map of the county in her purse when everything had gps, why she skipped a word or two when singing her favourite song aloud, and why she sometimes spoke of her grandmother and great-grandmother in the present tense (and, while he was at it, why she only seemed to have one grandmother and grandfather).

And, as she pressed the button to take her to floor seven, a million more ‘whys’ about her family that had built up over three years: why her Aunt Paige referred to all her social work clients as charges, why her Uncle Leo worked at a school that couldn’t be found anywhere in the state, why none of them ever seemed to drive anywhere, why everyone was an expert in mythology, why they were so adept at dealing with minor fires, and why none of them, regardless of personality, ever, not even once, made a wish (not on birthday cakes, or fountains, or shooting stars).

It couldn’t be easy for him to set aside his questions and trust that her family wasn’t as disconnected from reality as it seemed. Really, Pru realized with a flash of warmth, it was a testament to his love for her that he hadn’t distanced himself from the whole, crazy family already. The Halliwell brood were anything but practical.

Perhaps she would suggest Mike speak to her Uncle Henry.

The door made a soft click as she closed it behind her. Music emanated from the living room, and since she couldn’t see Mike in the immediate area, she guessed that’s where he was.

She urged herself onwards. This was it, the big moment.

The darned fabric of her sweater itched against her skin, reminding her of the mess underneath, and she decided to change her shirt before speaking to him. Explaining that her being a witch wasn’t as deadly as it seemed would be slightly awkwardly with her collar and upper half splashed with blood.

Pru tiptoed down the hallway and into their room. As she changed into a loose-fitting pale pink camisole, Pru found herself contemplating the value of attempting to get the stain out of the blouse at all. Surely the garment was too far gone. And then, she had to chastise herself. She was avoiding the real issue.

Mike looked away from the television as she rounded the corner. His face was a little stiff, but unbothered, like he was actively working at not worrying. More importantly, the edges of his lips tilted upwards when he sighted her, and he moved half an inch towards the edge of the couch, giving her more than enough room to slide next to him.

Pru did so and leaned into his shoulder when his right arm hooked around her shoulders.

“Everything alright?”

She nodded. Her mouth had somehow lost even the memory of moisture between the bedroom and the couch and even the smallest of words felt like a challenge.

“I picked up dinner on the way home,” Mike said smoothly, not even bringing up her abrupt departure. “It’s in the fridge, if you’re hungry.”

She was, she realized. And tired, sore, nauseous, and still a little traumatized at the feel of her cousins gurgling blood beneath her clenched fingers. She breathed deeply, urging the visual to recede from her mind, and desperately trying to convince herself that her fingertips were fine. They weren’t sticky with warm blood, that was just her brain throwing out mixed signals in an attempt to reconcile the past few hours. Pru pressed a soft kiss to Mike’s temple and stood from the couch.

While the microwave reheated pot stickers and tempura, Pru noted that Mike had already unpacked and set up their earlier purchases. Her heart nearly skipped a beat when there, snug between a brand now coffee maker and rice cooker, with a bright red bow like it was Christmas morning, was an espresso machine.

Suddenly the whirring of the microwave engine and the tick of the last thirty seconds decreasing felt like countdown timer. Thirty, then twenty, then ten, and five. She pulled out her plate before the final second, and slightly in a daze, gathered utensils and returned to the living room couch.

Pru resumed her seat. Mike stole a pot sticker, but Pru’s stomach was churning too harshly for her to eat.

Gone was her strategy. Her perfectly planned words had vanished, leaving only the frustrating taste of a memory that slipped out of her grasp.

“My family must seem odd to you,” Pru stated, dredging up what little she could remember.

She felt Mike shift beside her and looked up. He sent her a confused glance, probably wondering just what about the glowering man rolling dough onscreen prompted Pru’s statement.

“All families are their own ecosystem,” he replied diplomatically, clearly unsure where Pru was taking the conversation.

She gave him a small smile and looked him directly his brown eyes. “You don’t wonder about us at all?”

“I don’t—”

“Why we do certain things, and don’t do others?”

“I guess so. Why?”

Pru ignored the second sentence. “Like what?”

He was truly befuddled now. Confusion echoed through his eyes, around raised eyebrows and a scrunched forehead. “Your sister always seems to know how I’m going to respond,” he answered eventually. “Your mother and father too, sometimes, like you’ve all been raised to read people with surprising accuracy.”

Pru waited a moment. She supposed she should be grateful he didn’t have a list of incidents on the tip of his tongue, but she knew there had to be more.

“And I’ll admit to looking up your Grams’ obituary once,” he added, evidently figuring she wanted something else from him. “You’re a little… unclear with your tenses.”

In the background, the film continued with a contemplative score.

“Is that it?”

“Well, no, but it’s not really important, Pru. I like your family. Did they say otherwise?” Mike trailed off.

Pru shook her head. “No, they have only good things to say about you.” Her dad, in particular. It made her feel slightly suspicious sometimes, wondering if his smile was a little too knowing. He repeated, often, that cupids couldn’t get involved with their family’s love lives—something vague about catastrophic consequences Pru didn’t feel the need to pry—but sometimes she wondered. And then she’d have to laugh at herself, because she knew if she actually voiced these thoughts to Coop, he’d laugh along with her and insist that she live her life as she’s meant to without analyzing every little detail for their significance. “Life is about the journey, not the destination,” seemed to be the Cupid motto, and Coop embodied it fully.

In contrast, Pru was pretty certain her mother knew no more of Pru’s romantic destiny that Pru did. Phoebe barely managed a lie under normal circumstances and was especially susceptible to dropping the façade whenever there was something good to share. She was the perfect person to run to for advice, but had dust for willpower when, for example, her eldest daughter wanted to wait until official notification before announcing her promotion at work (“I already told your sisters and your Aunts at lunch. Sorry, but I’m just so excited for you!).

Thoughts of her parents and their patient, loving smiles brought Pru a sense of grounding. For a moment, she felt free.

“What I’m getting at is that there’s a reason they act a little different,” Pru said, transitioning to a conversational path that had only one exit. “Reason _we_ act a little different,” she corrected firmly after a moment.

She inhaled deeply.

“We’re—"

Mike smile was bemused. “ _I guess we’re all a little irrational_ ,” she remembered him saying a year ago, and the sentence reverberated around her head, never dropping in pitch like a proper echo but growing stronger with each recitation.

“--A little irrational when it comes to family.”

Mike flashed her a wider smile. “Everyone is.”

If Mike noticed Pru’s distress, if he caught her biting her lip to deter the tears that wanted to spill, if he tasted the disappointment and failure on her lips when they said goodnight, he didn’t indicate so. Instead, he drifted to sleep two hours later and Pru lay beside him, trying to convince herself she hadn’t really meant to tell him the family secret anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What would you do in Pru's place? Would you be able to tell your significant other, not knowing how they'd respond?


	19. Henry IV

**Henry IV**

Henry Junior did not have the energy to orb halfway across the city, much less take a passenger with him, but there were numerous reasons why he insisted to his Aunt Piper that he was more than capable of orbing himself and her daughter home.

Fact number one: orbing was his only available form of transportation. His truck was currently parked next to Melinda’s jeep in the lot behind their apartment building, and even if his truck were within sight, he was definitely sure he would fall asleep behind the wheel and crash into a tree.

Fact number two: he was not going to let his Aunt or Uncle Leo drive them home. That would be embarrassing. And his mother had already left, so she couldn’t orb them.

Fact number three: he and Melinda had been forced (via the deadly combination of guilt trip and Piper and Paige’s Mother Glare) to stay an extra hour at the Manor, and in those sixty minutes, they’d been force fed cookies, muffins, two apples, and Piper had mentioned grilling steaks. He was getting tired(er) from all the chewing. And then there was the juice, the endless glasses of juice.

Fact number four: orbing was fast, and if he could only manage not to fall out of it into some dirty alley, his bed was very, very close.

So, Henry assured that yes, he felt better and no, they didn’t need a ride. He was fine to orb, really, and before any more objections could be lobbed his way, he hooked his arm around Melinda’s elbow and orbed them away.

They landed in their living room clumsily. At first, Henry thought he was simply more tired than he thought if standing straight was suddenly difficult, but a short glance down revealed that they’d landed on an uneven pile of debris that used to be their dining room chairs.

The coffee table was split down the middle, the couch was upside down, and one of the cushions had been ripped to shreds. The fridge door was open and the contents scattered across the linoleum floor. And, most distressingly, the entire cereal box had been emptied into the sink, over the counters, and into the stove burners.

“I guess Turik didn’t appreciate us leaving the party early,” Melinda said slowly, blinking twice.

Henry picked up the Cap’n Crunch box and peered into the empty bag. “I just bought this.”

Melinda wiped the milk off of the walls before it soured and Henry chucked the perishables back into the fridge, but neither cousin continued beyond those minor tasks. Melinda gave him a mumbled good night, prepared for bed half-heartedly, and then disappeared into her closet of a room. Henry followed her example. He washed the blood off of his face, brushed his teeth, took off his clothes, didn’t bother with pajamas, and flopped into bed.

He was immensely glad that he’d left his phone on the floor where it fell out of his coveralls, because Penny surely wanted to hear from him, even if it was in a text message. He hadn’t come over as he’d told her he would, and worse yet, had seemingly disappeared off of the face of the earth. Henry fished the phone into his reach, lazily bringing it within reach of his dangling left hand with his foot.

Penny would have to be satisfied with a short message that explained nothing until tomorrow, when they could speak properly. Henry made sure the alarm was set and then let the phone drop back to the floor. He went slack in his bed and waited for sleep to take him into blissful oblivion.

Except it didn’t.

His eyes couldn’t stay open, but still he remained awake. Henry felt the minutes pass by in a haze. A thousand thoughts flashed through his mind. They all had one thing in common and he had to swallow a bout of nausea.

Lights flicked back on outside of his room and he heard shuffling, the creak at the end of the hall, and cupboard doors open and close. He ceded defeat to the Sandman, stood up, put on the first pair of pants he found, and met his cousin in the kitchen.

The scent of ginger wafted into the air when Melinda poured hot water into a teapot. “You too?” she asked holding her stomach, and he nodded. “At least you got us out of there before the steaks defrosted.”

Henry said nothing, preferring to let Mel think his nausea was from overeating like hers. Instead, he pulled out the only two dining chairs left, away from the broken table. Melinda poured tea into two mugs and then passed one and a bottle of Gravol into his hands.

They found an empty patch of carpet in the living room and sat down side by side against the wall. The heat from the mug scorched Henry’s palms, and he set his tea down.

“Do you think Pru told Mike the family secret?” Melinda asked him.

“I don’t know much about the whole situation,” he mumbled in response.

Evidently Melinda decided she’d let Pru explain, because she didn’t elaborate. “I don’t think she did,” she said instead. “I think this is the one challenge even _Prudence_ can’t handle.”

Henry knew she meant the words as a tease, but the intonation sent a chill down his spine.

“I think we need to worry about it,” he muttered, staring at the steam rising from the amber surface in his mug. The tea brought to mind a sense of peace, but his mind was anything but.

“About Mike?”

He shook his head and immediately regretted it. Two hours was not enough time for his body to replenish the blood it had lost. When his eyes refocused and the apartment stopped tilting, he forced himself to speak.

After all, the wriggling worms that were his thoughts certainly weren’t doing any good in his head.

“My vision,” he admitted finally. “Now is the time to worry about my premonition.”

Melinda twisted in her seat, right around so that her back was to the living room. Her normally tanned skin contrasted sharply with the black top slipping off her shoulder and it only brought Henry’s mind back to the fight against Turik. In fact, the scene that played over and over had started barely two feet from his current position.

She frowned at him and titled her head slightly, as if that would help her see into his mind.

“I don’t…”

Henry didn’t hurry to clarify. They were both operating at half speed, so several seconds passed before he spoke again. “You and Pru, Mel, you and Pru.”

Furrowed brows and a squint to her eyes meant she still didn’t understand.

“I don’t know what happened between the two of you today, but it was way too close to my premonition for my liking.”

“Our fight? Because I’ll be honest, you missed seventy-five percent of it.”

The look he gave her was the closest thing to a scowl from him to her in a decade and she immediately blanched.

“That was… I don’t know. There were some underlying issues about truth and lies, but you know us, Henry. We argue and then we smooth things over.”

That was true, he admitted grudgingly, but it didn’t help. Spats now were different than when they were teenagers. The stakes were different now.

He felt his mug of tea being pressed into his palm and guessed the nausea was apparent on his face. He took a sip and wished he felt better immediately. Belatedly, he remembered the gravol, and on the next drink, took two of the tiny pills.

The tea warmed his throat. “You’ve never hit her before,” he rebutted, quietly.

Henry watched Melinda’s response. She flinched and then her eyes widened.

“I didn’t _want_ to do that,” she whispered. The fact that she wasn’t shouting at him meant that his words had cut deep and there was an accusation of betrayal in her tone of voice. “I couldn’t fight it. You were controlled by him too. You went through the same thing.”

Unable to come up with a response, he nodded.

Melinda leaned forward and grabbed his hand. “Henry,” she said, firmly, “I _don’t_ want to hurt Pru. Whatever you saw in your premonition, that isn’t what I want and it isn’t what Pru wants either.”

He felt better having voiced his concerns so his voice was able to soften. “I know. I just saw the two of you fighting and it scared me. I’d written off that part of the premonition as impossible, and having it replay before my eyes was… terrifying.”

“Well, what can I do to make you feel better?”

He prepared himself. What he was about to ask wouldn’t go over well. It was the verbal equivalent of throwing gasoline onto a fire and expecting it to stay in its place. “I need you to not antagonize Pru.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t look at me like that, Mel,” he asked, grinning despite himself at the disgruntled look on her face. “I’m not saying you’re the problem. I’m saying that most of the time, you’re the catalyst. And the scientist adding the catalyst. And the explosion.”

Melinda pouted and Henry laughed outright. The lightness in his chest felt euphoric after days of heady pessimism.

She surprised him when her forced frown became a small, embarrassed smile. He’d expected more of an uphill battle. Chris had asked her much the same when he first began dating Bianca, and the resulting argument had stretched across three days and driven Melinda to act downright catty to everyone who took his side (which was everyone except Henry and eleven-year-old Portia) until Piper got involved.

She rolled her eyes, but the action was quickly contradicted when she said, “Okay.”

“Really?”

“Yes, _really_ ,” she drawled. “I will be less catalyst-y towards Pru in the future. It did get out of hand yesterday.”

He faked a gasp.

Melinda shook her head. “I don’t know how we stand each other.”

Henry waited until she stood up. “Alcohol,” he replied and grinned when she kicked his foot when she walked past him into her room. Henry dumped the mugs into the sink and followed suit. He sank into bed and fell into an easy sleep for the first time in two weeks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for episode two! I'll be taking a two week break, partly because I haven't written anything in a shamefully long time, and partly because AC Valhalla came out and that's going to consume all of my free time. 
> 
> I'd love to hear your thoughts so far and please join me two weeks from now for episode three, Deadly Afarition.

**Author's Note:**

> Wyatt needs a moment to unstick his foot from his mouth.


End file.
